How Badly I Want That Nameless Thing! First There Must Be An Idea, A Feeling... Maybe It Was An Abstract Idea That You've Got To Find A Symbol For, Or Maybe It Was A Concrete Form That You Have To Simplify Or Distort To Meet Your Ends, But That Starting Point Must Pervade The Whole.

-Emily Carr

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How Badly I Want

Emily Carr

Topic

Ideas

Feelings

Desire

More From Emily Carr

Bless... The Two Painting Masters Who First Pointed Out To Me That There Was Coming And Going Among Trees, That There Was Sunlight In Shadows.

Two

Tree

Shadow

I Am Always Watching For Fear Of Getting Feeble And Passé In My Work. I Don't Want To Trickle Out. I Want To Pour Till The Pail Is Empty, The Last Bit Going Out In A Gush, Not In Drops.

Going Out

Want

Lasts

It's All The Unwordable Things One Wants To Write About, Just As It's All The Unformable Things One Wants To Paint - Essence.

Writing

Essence

Want

Got A New Pup. He Is Half Griffon. The Other Half Is Mistake.

Mistake

Pups

Half

Do Not Try To Do Extraordinary Things But Do Ordinary Things With Intensity.

Practice

Trying

Ordinary

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.

Squares

Joy

Excuse

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!

Determination

White

Mountain

I Made Myself Into An Envelope Into Which I Could Thrust My Work Deep, Lick The Flap, Seal It From Everybody.

Envelopes

Privacy

Made

Don't Take What Someone Else Has Made Sure Of And Pretend It's You Yourself That Have Made Sure Of It Till It's Yours Absolutely By Conviction. It's Stealing To Take It And Hypocrisy And You'll Fall Into A Hole.

Fall

Hypocrisy

Stealing

I Think That One's Art Is A Growth Inside One. I Do Not Think One Can Explain Growth. It Is Silent And Subtle. One Does Not Keep Digging Up A Plant To See How It Grows.

Art

Thinking

Growth

I Thought My Mountain Was Coming This Morning. It Was Near To Speaking When Suddenly It Shifted, Sulked, And Returned To Smallness. It Has Eluded Me Again And Sits There, Puny And Dull. Why?

Morning

Failure

Mountain

If The Air Is Jam-full Of Sounds Which We Tune In With, Why Should It Not Also Be Full Of Feels And Smells And Things Seen Through The Spirit, Drawing Particles From Us To Them And Them To Us Like Magnets?

Air

Drawing

Smell

It Is Wonderful To Feel The Grandness Of Canada In The Raw, Not Because She Is Canada But Because She's Something Sublime That You Were Born Into, Some Great Rugged Power That You Are A Part Of.

Patriotic

Power

Sublime

Be Careful That You Do Not Write Or Paint Anything That Is Not Your Own, That You Don't Know In Your Own Soul.

Writing

Soul

Paint

Real Art Is Religion, A Search For The Beauty Of God Deep In All Things.

Art

Real

Art Is

Writing Is A Strong Easement For Perplexity. My Life Is A Map, Spread Out With All The Rivers And Hills Showing.

Strong

Writing

Rivers

The Sun Enriched The Old Poles Grandly... The Mothers Expressed All Womanhood - The Big Wooden Hands Holding The Child Were So Full Of Tenderness They Had To Be Distorted Enormously In Order To Contain It All. Womanhood Was Strong In Kitwancool.

Mother

Strong

Children

What Do I Want To Express? The Subject Means Little. The Arrangement, The Design, Colour, Shape, Depth, Light, Space, Mood, Movement, Balance, Not One Or All Of These Fills The Bill. There Is Something Additional, A Breath That Draws Your Breath Into Its Breathing, A Heartbeat That Pounds On Yours, A Recognition Of The Oneness Of All Things.

Mean

Oneness

Space

The Biggest Part Of Painting Perhaps Is Faith, And Waiting Receptively, Content To Go Any Way, Not Planning Or Forcing. The Fear, Though, Is Laziness. It Is So Easy To Drift And Finally Be Tossed Up On The Beach, Derelict.

Beach

Waiting

Laziness

Up Came The Sun, And Drank The Dew.

Morning

Dew

Sun

Art Being So Much Greater Than Ourselves, It Will Not Give Up Once It Has Taken Hold.

Art

Giving Up

Taken

Art Is An Aspect Of God And There Is Only One God, But Different People See Him In Different Ways. Though He Is Always The Same He Doesn't Always Look The Same.

Art

People

Different

It Is Wonderful To Feel The Grandness Of Canada In The Raw.

Canada

Wonderful

Feels

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.

Dog

Years

Rose

Enter Into The Life Of The Trees. Know Your Relationship And Understand Their Language, Unspoken, Unwritten Talk. Answer Back To Them With Their Own Dumb Magnificence, Soul Words, Earth Words, The God In You Responding To The God In Them.

God

Tree

Dumb

You Come Into The World Alone And You Go Out Of The World Alone Yet It Seems To Me You Are More Alone While Living Than Even Going And Coming.

Loneliness

Political

World

There Is Something Bigger Than Fact: The Underlying Spirit, All It Stands For, The Mood, The Vastness, The Wildness.

Vastness

Facts

Spirit

I Sat Staring, Staring, Staring - Half Lost, Learning A New Language Or Rather The Same Language In A Different Dialect.

Different

Dialect

Half

There Is A Side Of Friendship That Develops Better And Stronger By Correspondence Than Contact.... The Absence Of The Flesh In Writing Perhaps Brings Souls Nearer.

Writing

Soul

Stronger

Twenty Can't Be Expected To Tolerate Sixty In All Things, And Sixty Gets Bored Stiff With Twenty's Eternal Love Affairs.

Bored

Twenties

Eternal Love

So Still Were The Big Woods Where I Sat, Sound Might Not Yet Have Been Born.

Silence

Sound

Dialect

I Have Been Sent More Ridiculous Press Notices. People Are Frequently Comparing My Work With Van Gogh... I Do Hope I Do Not Get Bloated And Self-satisfied. When Proud Feelings Come I Step Up Over Them To The Realm Of Work, To The Thing I Want, The Liveness Of The Thing Itself.

Self

People

Feelings

Trying To Find Equivalents For Things In Words Helps Me Find Equivalents In Painting.

Trying

Helping

Painting

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.

Trying

Way

Painting

The Earth Is Soaked And Soggy With Rain. Everything Is Drinking Its Fill And The Surplus Gluts The Drains. The Sky Is Full Of It And Lies Low Over The Earth, Heavy And Dense. Even The Sea Is Wetter Than Usual!

Lying

Drinking

Rain

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.

Men

Giving

Lovely

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.

Details

Lines

Totems

What A Splendid Time Woo Must Have Had.

Splendid

Let Me Not Fuss And Fret At My Incompetence But Be Still And Know That Thou Art God.

Art

Peace

Incompetence

The Memory Of Cumshewa Is Of A Great Lonesomeness Smothered In A Blur Of Rain.

Memories

Rain

Blur

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.

Home

Cat

Feet

When You Really Think About Your Hand You Begin To Realize Its Connection, To Sense The Hum Of Your Own Being Passing Through It. When We Look At A Piece Of The Universe We Should Feel The Same.

Thinking

Hands

Connections

There Is A Need To Go Deeper, To Let Myself Go Completely, To Enter Into The Surroundings In The Real Fellowship Of Oneness, To Lift Above The Outer Shell, Out Into The Depth And Wideness Where God Is The Recognized Centre And Everything Is In Time With Everything, And The Key-note Is God.

Real

Keys

Oneness

Writing Is A Splendid Sorter Of... Feelings, Better Even Than Paint.

Writing

Feel Better

Feelings

I Was Not Ready For Abstraction. I Clung To Earth And Her Dear Shapes, Her Density, Her Herbage, Her Juice. I Wanted Her Volume, And I Wanted To Hear Her Throb.

Density

Juice

Earth

Oh, I Wonder If I Will Ever Feel The Burst Of Birth-joy, That Knowing That The Indescribable, Joyous Thing That Has Wooed And Wond Me Has Passed Through My Life And Produced One Atom Of The Great Reality.

Reality

Knowing

Joy

Sometimes I Could Quit Paint And Take To Charring. It Must Be Fine To Clean Perfectly, To Shine And Polish And Know That It Could Not Be Done Better. In Painting That Never Occurs.

Perfection

Shining

Done

Over And Over One Must Ask Oneself The Queston, 'what Do I Want To Express? What Is The Thought Behind The Saying? What Is My Ideal, What My Objective? What? Why? Why? What?

Want

Behinds

Ideals

As The Woods Are The Same, The Trees Standing In Their Places, The Rocks And The Earth... They Are Always Different Too, As Lights And Shadows And Seasons And Moods Pass Through Them.

Light

Rocks

Tree

Art Is Art, Nature Is Nature, You Cannot Improve Upon It.... Pictures Should Be Inspired By Nature, But Made In The Soul Of The Artist. It Is The Soul Of The Individual That Counts.

Art

Soul

Inspired

Oh I Do Want That Thing, That Oneness Of Movement That Will Catch The Thing Up Into One Movement And Sing - Harmony Of Life.

Oneness

Movement

Want

If You're Going To Lick The Icing Off Somebody Else's Cake You Won't Be Nourished And It Won't Do You Any Good,--or You Might Find The Cake Had Caraway Seeds And You Hate Them.

Oh, Spring! I Want To Go Out And Feel You And Get Inspiration. My Old Things Seem Dead. I Want Fresh Contacts, More Vital Searching.

Spring

Inspiration

Old Things

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.

Spirit

Passing

Passings

Inspiration Is Intention Obeyed.

Inspiration

Intention

The Outstanding Event Was The Doing Which I Am Still At. Don't Pickle Me Awayas Done.

Events

Done

Pickles

Indian Art Broadened My Seeing, Loosened The Formal Tightness I Had Learned In England's Schools. Its Bigness And Stark Reality Baffled My White Man's Understanding... I Had Been Schooled To See Outsides Only, Not Struggle To Pierce.

Art

Struggle

School

Last Night I Dreamed That I Came Face To Face With A Picture I Had Done And Forgotten, A Forest Done In Simple Movement, Just Forms Of Trees Moving In Space. That Is The Third Time I Have Seen Pictures In My Dreams, A Glint Of What I Am Striving To Attain.

Dream

Moving

Simple

I Can Rise Above The Humility Of My Failure With An Intense Desire To Search Deeper And A Blind Faith That Some Day My Sight May Pierce Through The Veils That Hide. I Know God's Face Is There If I Keep My Gaze Steady Enough.

Humility

Sight

Desire

The Men Resent A Woman Getting Any Honour In What They Consider Is Essentially Their Field. Men Painters Mostly Despise Women Painters. So I Have Decided To Stop Squirming, To Throw Any Honour In With Canada And Women.

Men

Canada

Fields

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.

Inspirational

Life

Clouds

The Liveness In Me Just Loves To Feel The Liveness In Growing Things, In Grass And Rain And Leaves And Flowers And Sun And Feathers And Furs And Earth And Sand And Moss.

Rain

Flower

Moss

You Always Feel When You Look It Straight In The Eye That You Could Have Put More Into It, Could Have Let Yourself Go And Dug Harder.

Inspirational

Eye

Looks

I Wonder Why We Are Always Sort Of Ashamed Of Our Best Parts And Try To Hide Them. We Don't Mind Ridicule Of Our 'sillinesses' But Of Our 'sobers'.

Mind

Trying

Wonder

The Artist Himself May Not Think He Is Religious, But If He Is Sincere His Sincerity In Itself Is Religion.

Religious

Artist

Thinking

Oh, The Glory Of Growth, Silent, Mighty, Persistent, Inevitable! To Awaken, To Open Up Like A Flower To The Light Of A Fuller Consciousness!

Flower

Light

Growth

Go Out There Into The Glory Of The Woods. See God In Every Particle Of Them Expressing Glory And Strength And Power, Tenderness And Protection. Know That They Are God Expressing God Made Manifest.

God

Nature

Woods

Look At The Earth Crowded With Growth, New And Old Bursting From Their Strong Roots Hidden In The Silent, Live Ground, Each Seed According To Its Own Kind...each One Knowing What To Do, Each One Demanding Its Own Rights On The Earth. So Artist, You Too From The Depths Of Your Soul...let Your Roots Creep Forth, Gaining Strength.

Spiritual

Strong

Artist

Perfectly Ordered Disorder Designed With A Helter-skelter Magnificence.

Magnificence

Disorder

Cedars Are Terribly Sensitive To Change Of Time And Light - Sometimes They Are Bluish Cold-green, Then They Turn Yellow Warm-green - Sometimes Their Boughs Flop Heavy And Sometimes Float, Then They Are Fairy As Ferns And Then They Droop, Heavy As Heartaches.

Change

Light

Yellow

Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.

2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.

2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.

2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.

3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.

3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.

3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.

4. Proper Usage of Quotes

4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.

4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.

4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).

5. Common Mistakes to Avoid

5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.

5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.

5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.

6. Quotes in Different Contexts

6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.

6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.

6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.

7. Punctuation and Formatting

Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:

Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.

Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.

Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.

8. Ethical Considerations

Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes

Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.

Conclusion

Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.

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