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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.

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
Things
Paint
Essence
Wants
Write
Writing

More quotes by 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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The men resent a woman getting any honour in what they consider is essentially their field. Men painters mostly despise women painters. So I have decided to stop squirming, to throw any honour in with Canada and women.
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.
Emily Carr
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Rentals sank, living rose. I could not afford help. I must be owner, agent, landlady and janitor. I loathed landladying... I tried in every way to augment my income. Small fruit, hens, rabbits, dogs - pottery... I never painted now - had neither time nor wanting. For about fifteen years I did not paint.
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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What a splendid time Woo must have had.
Emily Carr
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Writing is a splendid sorter of... feelings, better even than paint.
Emily Carr
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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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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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Up came the sun, and drank the dew.
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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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
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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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Indians do not hinder the progress of their dead by embalming or tight coffining. When the spirit has gone they give the body back to the earth. the earth welcomes the body-coaxes new life and beauty from it, hurries over what men shudder at. Lovely tender herbage bursts from the graves, swiftly, exulting over corruption.
Emily Carr
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Do not try to do extraordinary things but do ordinary things with intensity.
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 biggest part of painting perhaps is faith, and waiting receptively, content to go any way, not planning or forcing. The fear, though, is laziness. It is so easy to drift and finally be tossed up on the beach, derelict.
Emily Carr
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Be careful that you do not write or paint anything that is not your own, that you don't know in your own soul.
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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Oh, the glory of growth, silent, mighty, persistent, inevitable! To awaken, to open up like a flower to the light of a fuller consciousness!
Emily Carr