ABSTRACT
In 1927, Canadian artist, Emily Carr, received an invitation from Eric Brown of the National Gallery in Ottawa to send some of her work for an exhibition and to come east herself for the opening. He also suggested that she stop in Toronto to meet some landscape painters called the Group of Seven-a meeting that proved to be propitious for Emily because she saw in their canvases the kind of intensity that she had be struggling to represent. “I’m way behind them in drawing and in composition and rhythm and planes,” she wrote, “but I know inside me what they’re after and I feel that perhaps, given a chance, I could get it too Ah, how I have wasted the years! But there are still a few left” (1966, p. 6). Later, she expressed more fully the impact their work and insights had had on her:
Oh, God, what have I seen? Where have I been? …Chords way down in my being have been touched… Something has called out of somewhere. Something in me is trying to answer…. Oh, these men, this Group of Seven, what have they created? …What language do they speak, those silent, awe-filled spaces? I do not know. Wait and listen; you shall hear by and by…. (pp. 6-7)
During her time with them, she asked the group, particularly Lawren Harris, to explain their philosophy of art, their techniques, and their way of working. She compared their experience to her own struggles and to her ongoing search to reveal on canvas a deep connection to nature. She recognized that such an exchange of ideas and techniques had been missing in her solitary practice, but seeing the Group of Seven’s work sharpened her understanding of her own process and made her eager to return to her studio, clearer now about what she wished to achieve. “When will I start to work?” she asked. “Lawren Harris’s pictures are still in my brain. They have got there to stay. I don’t believe anything will oust them. I hope not because they make my thoughts and life better” (p. 19).
