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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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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
Trying
Except
Way
Bigger
Smattering
Meaning
Dishonestly
Painting
Bluffing
Getting
Representation
Wrong
Honestly
Right
Surface
Thing
Paint

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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.
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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.
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Inspiration is intention obeyed.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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So still were the big woods where I sat, sound might not yet have been born.
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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.
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Writing is a splendid sorter of... feelings, better even than paint.
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Let me not fuss and fret at my incompetence but be still and know that Thou art God.
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Do not try to do extraordinary things but do ordinary things with intensity.
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What a splendid time Woo must have had.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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Perfectly ordered disorder designed with a helter-skelter magnificence.
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The artist himself may not think he is religious, but if he is sincere his sincerity in itself is religion.
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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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Got a new pup. He is half griffon. The other half is mistake.
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