Growing Pains: The Autobiography of Emily Carr (Clarke Irwin Canadian Paperback)

Category: Books,Biographies & Memoirs,Arts & Literature

Growing Pains: The Autobiography of Emily Carr (Clarke Irwin Canadian Paperback) Details

About the Author Young, spirited and rebellious, Emily Carr escaped a strict Victorian household to study art in the Paris of Picasso and Matisse. In middle age, she shook the dust of acceptable society from her shoes and began a passionate journey into the wilderness of British Columbia; the power of her genius made her one of the twentieth century's great painters. Fortunately, she also wrote. In her books, her warmth, her humanity, her sense of fun and the ridiculous combine to present a self-portrait of a remarkable woman and artist. -- Mary Pratt Robin Laurence is an award-winning freelance writer, critic and curator based in Vancouver. She has a B.F.A. in studio arts and an M.A. in art history, and was educated at the University of Calgary, the University of Victoria, the Banff School of Fine Arts and the Instituto Allende in Mexico. She has written dozens of essays for local and regional galleries, and her articles on art have appeared in many magazines. Laurence was also visual arts critic for the Georgia Strait and the Vancouver Sun. Read more

Reviews

I loved that Growing Pains tells the story of a woman and self-made artist of amazing talent and determination. Her principles for living and working were unimpeachable. She didn't compromise her principles for anyone, and yet she was able to live with and walk with people from the most elite socio-economic levels to those who lived in striking poverty. But given the choice of living with elite white people or with the poorest of the Indians of western Canada she was most at home when she was with the Indians. She was also courageous beyond measure. She took more than one journey, alone along the western coast of Canada sometimes on a fishing boat, other times alone in a canoe paddled only by an Indian, to reach Indian villages, a number of them totally abandoned, where she slept the floor of abandoned Indian houses that were infested with rats. In addition to her autobiography here titled "Growing Pains" Emily Carr also kept a detailed journal of her travels to Indian villages the reveals an astoundingly brave woman. I highlighted a number of passages in Growing Pains and would recommend it highly. Once you've read growing pains, and if you like it as much as I did, you will almost certainly want to read "Klee Wyck" which gives more of the details about he journeys to develop a record in on canvass of the life styles, culture and art of the Indian tribes of western Canada. A heads up: Be sure to by the version of Klee Wyck the has an introduction by Kathryn Bridge. The version of Klee Wyck that doesn't begin with the introduction by Kathryn Bridge is called the Classic Version. Don't be fooled by the term Classic. It was called the Classic version because it was printing by a company that put out a whole series of books by Canadians titled Canadian Classics. But this company censored and even re-wrote some of Emily Carr's words to eliminate Carr's criticisms of accounts of the abuse of the Indian tribes of western Canada by Christian missionaries and by the government of Canada. Currently Amazon sells an $11.95 version, which is the one that is unadulterated and has the introduction by Kathryn Bridge. The $7.95 version is the censored version and has even had some of Emily Carr's stories completely censored out of her book.

Share this post