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Do not try to do extraordinary things but do ordinary things with intensity.

Emily Carr

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Emily Carr
Age: 73 †
Born: 1871
Born: December 13
Died: 1945
Died: March 2
Artist
Autobiographer
Painter
Writer
M. Emily Carr
Emily M. Carr
Klee Wyck
Ordinary
Practice
Trying
Things
Intensity
Extraordinary

More quotes by Emily Carr

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There is no right and wrong way to paint except honestly or dishonestly. Honestly is trying for the bigger thing. Dishonestly is bluffing and getting through a smattering of surface representation with no meaning.
Emily Carr
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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.
Emily Carr
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Indian Art broadened my seeing, loosened the formal tightness I had learned in England's schools. Its bigness and stark reality baffled my white man's understanding... I had been schooled to see outsides only, not struggle to pierce.
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It's all the unwordable things one wants to write about, just as it's all the unformable things one wants to paint - essence.
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I am always watching for fear of getting feeble and passé in my work. I don't want to trickle out. I want to pour till the pail is empty, the last bit going out in a gush, not in drops.
Emily Carr
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Twenty can't be expected to tolerate sixty in all things, and sixty gets bored stiff with twenty's eternal love affairs.
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Perfectly ordered disorder designed with a helter-skelter magnificence.
Emily Carr
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You must be absolutely honest and true in the depicting of a totem for meaning is attached to every line. You must be most particular about detail and proportion.
Emily Carr
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The artist himself may not think he is religious, but if he is sincere his sincerity in itself is religion.
Emily Carr
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What do I want to express? The subject means little. The arrangement, the design, colour, shape, depth, light, space, mood, movement, balance, not one or all of these fills the bill. There is something additional, a breath that draws your breath into its breathing, a heartbeat that pounds on yours, a recognition of the oneness of all things.
Emily Carr
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Oh, Spring! I want to go out and feel you and get inspiration. My old things seem dead. I want fresh contacts, more vital searching.
Emily Carr
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The foolish square calves pretend to be frightened of our train. Bluffers! Haven't they seen it every day since they were born? It's just an excuse to shake the joy out of their heels.
Emily Carr
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It is wonderful to feel the grandness of Canada in the raw, not because she is Canada but because she's something sublime that you were born into, some great rugged power that you are a part of.
Emily Carr
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The sun enriched the old poles grandly... The mothers expressed all womanhood - the big wooden hands holding the child were so full of tenderness they had to be distorted enormously in order to contain it all. Womanhood was strong in Kitwancool.
Emily Carr
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Let me not fuss and fret at my incompetence but be still and know that Thou art God.
Emily Carr
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There is something bigger than fact: the underlying spirit, all it stands for, the mood, the vastness, the wildness.
Emily Carr
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My mountain is dead. As soon as she has dried, I'll bury her under a decent layer of white paint. But I haven't done with the old lady far from it!
Emily Carr
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The spirit must be felt so intensely that it has power to call others in passing, for it must pass, not stop in the pictures.
Emily Carr
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Up came the sun, and drank the dew.
Emily Carr
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There is a side of friendship that develops better and stronger by correspondence than contact.... The absence of the flesh in writing perhaps brings souls nearer.
Emily Carr