Along the Harbourfront of her home city of Victoria, on the grounds of the Fairmount Empress Hotel, across the street from Royal BC Museum and the First Nation Totem Pole, stands a bronze statue of the iconic Canadian painter and writer Emily Carr, best known for her Modernist and Post-Impressionist paintings of western coast landscape and First Nations villages.
Dedicated on October 13th, 2010, the statue was commissioned by the Parks and Recreation Foundation of Victoria. The Canadian sculptress Barbara Paterson created it. She is famous for her Famous Five Monuments in Ottawa and Calgary. It depicts Carr sitting on a rock, holding a pencil and a sketchpad in one hand and with the other hand reaching to her pet Javanese monkey Woo who sits on her shoulder, while her dog Billie is by her feet. Next to the statue, there is a book-shaped plaque detailing her biography.
Emily Carr (1871-1945) was born in Victoria, British Columbia. She showed artistic tendencies from a young age but started to study art professionally only at 19 after her parents died. Carr attended art schools in San Francisco, London, and Paris and developed a unique style of painting characterized by bold and vibrant colors. On her return to Canada, she traveled to First Nations villages, painting the wild nature of the countryside and the indigenous people and their artifacts. Her recognition grew gradually, but only in 1927, at 56, did Carr exhibit her work at the National Gallery of Canada. Afterward, she held exhibitions in the US and Europe. In her late 60s, after suffering several heart attacks and a severe stroke, Carr stopped painting and turned to writing. She published six autobiographical books before she died at the age of 74.
A two-minute drive or a 10-minute walk south will get you to Carr House. It was Carr’s childhood home and nowadays is a museum dedicated to telling her life story and exhibiting her art.
Emily Carr: Seeing + Being Seen (Exhibition Tour)
Emily Carr’s legacy is very much intertwined with the land and sites of the West Coast. She is celebrated for the way in which she articulated what she saw in these landscapes through painting and for how she interpreted and portrayed Indigenous village sites, landmarks, and culture.
The exhibition, Emily Carr: Seeing and Being Seen, is split into two sections. Half the gallery shows how she documented what was around her, highlighting many of the works she is admired for today. The other half focuses on how artists and historians of various backgrounds continue to interpret her legacy and body of work.
The section called Seeing displays 13 works by Carr focusing on bringing a more fulsome narrative to the intersection of land and cultures that Carr was documenting through her work. Not only showing what Carr recorded through her paintings at these sites, but also what other stories and lived experiences exist there.
Being Seen examines works by other artists impacted by Carr’s legacy. Artists who admire her work, historians who adore her, and works that hold her accountable and critique her engagement with Indigenous peoples. Showcased in this section are artists such as: Edythe Hembroff-Schleicher, Pat Martin Bates, Jack Shadbolt, Isabel Hobbs, and Joan Cardinal-Schubert offering many varied perspectives to engage with. Schubert’s work titled Birch Bark Letters to Emily Carr: Astrolobe Discovery depicts letters written to, and imagined conversations between Carr and the artist of Kainaiwa ancestry. All of these people see Carr through their own unique vantage point, and contribute to the ongoing discussion about what her work and legacy represent. The lens through which artists are seen by others shapes their legacy throughout their lives and after they are gone, and Emily Carr is no exception.
The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria is located on the traditional territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən speaking peoples, today known as the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations. We extend our gratitude and appreciation for the opportunity to live and work on this territory.
Videography and editing by Marina DiMaio.
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