At first glance, the book did not appeal it seemed to be one of those dry biographical fictions of a boring person with whom I could never find any connections.
Sleepless and the book handy, I started it....and quickly found myself drawn into the life of artist Emily Carr by her strong personality and the vivid descriptions of the Pacific Northwest...the Great Western edge of the Canadian provinces.
Trained to create nice womanly watercolors and safe pastoral vistas as befitting a good woman of Edwardian times, she looked at her beloved landscape, especially the native Totems, decorations, and lifestyle and longed to do more.
Here mounting frustration to be taken seriously as an artist (and not just a female artist) and her constant love of her homeland set her on a path divorcing her from the traditionalist art recognized by the restrictive art world of Vancouver and British Columbia to master the Fauve style and finally to develop her own unique touch blending many schools with the bold colors and dominant themes of her forests, villages, and native life.
Along the way, the author illustrates the struggles of the First Nations people of western Canada were a slow annihilation of their necessary creative outlets, their bone deep connection to true spirituality and their ancient values as significant in North America as their European counterparts.
As I read, however, I was struck by home universal her struggle to break out of a mold and create what was unique to her and how common is the journey such creatives make as they must dodge the narrow minded and those who fear change as a challenge to their existence.
Susan Vreeland. The Forest Lover. Viking, 2004. ISBN: 0-670-03267-0
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