Emily Carr 1871 - 1945

Private Collection, Vancouver Island
Private Collection, British Columbia

Doris Shadbolt, Emily Carr, Vancouver, 1990, p. 83.

In her biography of the artist, Doris Shadbolt wrote “images and echoes of the aboriginal culture of North America’s Northwest Coast constitute a frequent and strong presence in Emily Carr’s work. The Indian theme appeared early in her artistic career, and dominated the period of her great formal canvases.”

In creating the totem carvings so admired by Emily Carr, Native artists used specific images and iconography to relate stories about their land and people. So, too, did Carr use purposeful compositional arrangement as a way to convey meaning and messages in her paintings.

Taking their rest at the river’s edge, the Indian man and woman’s bodies echo the undulating arc of the winding stream by which they sit. Their curled arms, front and centre of the picture plane, curve just as the path of the water does. The man’s body, from his elbow down through his leg, mirrors the bend in the riverbank behind him, completing it in the viewer’s eye—relaying Carr’s message that these people and the land are inextricably linked—of one entity, in a sense.