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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

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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.

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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.

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.

Inspiration Is Intention Obeyed.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

Perfectly Ordered Disorder Designed With A Helter-skelter Magnificence.

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

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!

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?

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.

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

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

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.

What A Splendid Time Woo Must Have Had.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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'.

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.

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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.

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.

Up Came The Sun, And Drank The Dew.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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