Emily Carr, “Somewhere”

Canadian painter Emily Carr (1871–1945) is celebrated for her modern vision of the West Coast landscape.

National acclaim arrived in 1927, when Carr was invited by Eric Brown, first Director of the National Gallery of Canada, to participate in the Exhibition of Canadian West Coast Art Native and Modern, co-organized by Marius Barbeau. Carr was featured along with Indigenous artists such as Fred Alexee, Charles Edenshaw and unnamed Tsimshian, Haida, Tlingit, Nootka, Nisga’a and Kwakiutl artists, as well as the Group of Seven who were influenced by Scandinavian modernism’s articulation of the symbolic within landscape painting.

In the mid-1930s, Carr focussed on forest subjects found close to home. She had purchased a caravan, which she nicknamed “The Elephant,” in 1933 which allowed her to spend weeks at a time in the forests near Victoria, working in areas nearby such as Metchosin or Goldstream Park. Her work began to move away from Indigenous iconography and subject matter that had distinguished it, replacing her highly modelled Post-Impressionist, Fauvist and Cubist-influenced approaches to picture making with a more gestural form. Writing in her journal in 1933, Carr summarized the central aims of these new techniques: “Direction, that’s what I’m after, everything moving together, relative movement, sympathetic movement, connected movement, flowing, liquid, universal movement, all directions summing up in one grand direction, leading the eye forward, and satisfying.”[1]

Somewhere, (ca. 1942), is exemplary of this later period and reflects her focus on the spiritual, an attempt to depict the life force within the forest itself. From 1933 to 1937, Carr’s paintings were distinguished by unifying gestural brushwork that moves across the entire picture plane, fusing individual forms within key sweeping movements. To achieve this, she had replaced watercolours with a new material inspired in part by the pragmatics of cheaper materials: using gasoline to thin her oil paints, Carr discovered that the density and viscosity of the medium allowed her to quickly achieve an expressive summary of the scenes in front of her. There is vibrancy within her repetitive strokes, where colour and tone provide the foundational structure for the painting. The compositions from this time have the energy of the forest itself as their subject, culminating in a suffused emanation of light from within the scene itself. Carr also found her new technique allowed her to retain the chromatic and textural range of oil on canvas along with the portability and ease of her earlier watercolour sketches.

Somewhere, (ca. 1942), reveals an artist at the height of her powers. In this painting, Carr animates and unifies the entire scene through rhythmic, translucent layers of brushwork. The marks are rapid and unfussy, indicating the confidence of a mature artist whose distillation of knowledge means that each stroke is an informed one. Tone is indicated through deft, efficient notations of light and dark calligraphic marks, ranging from white to neutral to dark umber. They also provide an overall structure: a straggling branch or tree trunk is viewed through a shimmering accumulation of directional marks. The resulting painting depicts the spiritual quality and joyful, energetic expression Carr sought, the ‘sympathetic, connected, flowing liquid, universal movement’ that was her aspiration. Somewhere takes as its subject matter, the transcendent force of a living, evolving, changing rainforest.

In Somewhere, the influence of her close friendship with Lawren Harris is evident. Their shared interest in spirituality formed a crucial part of their discussions of form and subject matter. In Harris’s work, this was expressed through a belief in Theosophy while Carr’s approach was informed by Hinduism, the writings of American writers Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well as Indigenous spirituality and her Christian faith. In 1933, Carr wrote, “I think we miss our goal very often because we only regard parts, overlooking the ensemble, painting trees and forgetting the forest…. A main movement must run through the picture…. A main movement must run through the picture, the movement and direction of lines and planes shall express some attribute of God—power, peace, strength, serenity, joy. The movement shall be so great the picture will rock and sway together carrying the artist and after him, the looker with it, catching up with the soul of the thing and marching on together.”[2]

Carr also met Georgia O’Keefe during a trip to New York City in 1930, whose work has similarly been associated with a spiritual framework derived from contemplation of the landscape. Carr’s friendships with West Coast artists Mark Tobey, Jack Shadbolt and Lee Nam were further influences: Nam’s traditional Chinese landscapes incorporated aerial perspectives and watercolour tonality, which moved her for its distillation of form. Carr organized an exhibition of his work. The American artist Mark Tobey was also an artistic influence, inspired by Zen Buddhism and trips to China and Japan. He joined Carr in Victoria in 1928 to teach a workshop out of her studio, where he outlined his development of a spiritual language through calligraphic-style mark making within an abstract field. These explorations of ‘all-over-ness’ focused on abstraction, rhythm and the spiritual nature of the landscape and influenced Carr as well as the later Abstract Expressionist movement.

By the mid-1930s, forest sketches produced in situ had evolved from studies into works such as Somewhere: fully realized works in their own right that demonstrate the powerful expressionistic forces she sought more directly. Paintings such as Heart of the Forest, (1935), Fir Tree and Sky, (ca. 1935-1936), Forest (Tree Trunks) (ca. 1938-39), Sunshine and Tumult, (1938–39), and later easel works such as Sombreness Sunlit, (ca. 1938–40), demonstrate her discoveries and represent some of Carr’s most iconic and affecting achievements.

[1] Doris Shadbolt, ed, The Emily Carr Omnibus, (Vancouver/Toronto, Douglas and McIntyre: 1993). 701-702.
[2] ibid.

Contributed by Lisa Baldissera. Baldissera has worked in curatorial roles in public art galleries in Western Canada since 1999, including Senior Curator (Contemporary Calgary), Chief Curator (Mendel Art Gallery) and Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. She has produced more than seventy exhibitions of local, Canadian, and international artists and holds MFAs in Creative Writing (UBC), Art (University of Saskatchewan) and a PhD in Art Writing and Curating (Goldsmiths College). She is the author of Emily Carr: Art and Life (Art Canada Institute) and Convoluted Beauty: In the Company of Emily Carr (Mendel Art Gallery). She is currently the Director of Griffin Art Projects in North Vancouver, BC.

About the auction:

Showcasing a curated selection of outstanding Canadian and international artworks, our Major Spring Auction of Canadian and International Art will feature important pieces by Emily Carr, Lawren Harris, David Milne, Alfred Joseph Casson, Walter Joseph Phillips, Jack Bush, and E.J. Hughes. Highlights from the international selection include works by Jules Olitski, Karel Appel, Rudolf Ernst, and Edward Seago.

Please contact us for more information.

Bidding is available May 14 – May 28, 2026.

On view at our Toronto gallery:

 Wednesday, May 20 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
 Thursday, May 21 from 10:00 am to 7:00 pm
 Friday, May 22 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
 Saturday, May 23 from 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm
 Sunday, May 24 from 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm
 Monday, May 25 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
 Tuesday, May 26 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
 Wednesday, May 27 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm

Or by appointment.