Emily Carr - Influence of The Pacific Northwest School

Influence of The Pacific Northwest School

Carr exhibited in 1924 and 1925 at the Artists of the Pacific Northwest shows in Seattle, and fellow exhibitor Mark Tobey came to visit her in Victoria in the autumn of 1928 to teach an advanced course in her studio. Working with Tobey, Carr furthered her understanding of contemporary art, experimenting with Tobey's methods of full-on abstraction and Cubism, but was reluctant to go to Tobey's extremes.

"I was not ready for abstraction. I clung to earth and her dear shapes, her density, her herbage, her juice. I wanted her volume and I wanted to hear her throb."

Despite Carr's reluctance, the Vancouver Art Gallery, a major curator of Carr's work, records Carr in this period as abandoning the documentary impulse and starting to concentrate instead on capturing the emotional and mythological content embedded in the totemic carvings, which she did by jettisoning her painterly and practiced Post-Impressionist style in favour of creating highly stylized and abstracted geometric forms.

Read more about this topic:  Emily Carr

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