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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
Essence
Wants
Write
Writing
Things
Paint

More quotes by 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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Oh I do want that thing, that oneness of movement that will catch the thing up into one movement and sing - harmony of life.
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 house begins to be a home. The unfamiliar places are beginning to fold the familiar objects into their keeping and to cozy them down. Objects that swore at each other when the movers heaved them into the new rooms have subsided into corners and sit to lick their feet and wash their faces like cats accepting a new home.
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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There was neither horizon, cloud, nor sound of that pink, spread silence even I had become part, belonging as much to sky as to earth.
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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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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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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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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You always feel when you look it straight in the eye that you could have put more into it, could have let yourself go and dug harder.
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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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 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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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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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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I wonder why we are always sort of ashamed of our best parts and try to hide them. We don't mind ridicule of our 'sillinesses' but of our 'sobers'.
Emily Carr
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Trying to find equivalents for things in words helps me find equivalents in painting.
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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Go out there into the glory of the woods. See God in every particle of them expressing glory and strength and power, tenderness and protection. Know that they are God expressing God made manifest.
Emily Carr