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Carr
was most heavily influenced by the landscape and First Nations cultures
of British Columbia, and Alaska. Having visited a mission school beside
the Nuu-chah-nulth community of Ucluelet in 1898, in 1908 she was
inspired by a visit to Skagway and began to paint the totem poles of the
coastal Kwakwaka’wakw, Haida, Tsimshian, Tlingit and other communities,
in an attempt to record and learn from as many as possible. In 1913 she
was obliged by financial considerations to return permanently to
Victoria after a few years in Vancouver, both of which towns were, at
that time, conservative artistically. Influenced by styles such as
post-impressionism and Fauvism, her work was alien to those around her
and remained unknown to and unrecognized by the greater art world for
many years. For more than a decade she worked as a potter, dog breeder
and boarding house landlady, having given up on her artistic career.
In the 1920s she came
into contact with members of the Group of Seven (artists) after being
invited by the National Gallery of Canada to participate in an
exhibition of Canadian West Coast Art, Native and Modern. She travelled
to Ontario for this show in 1927 where she met members of the Group,
including Lawren Harris, whose support was invaluable. She was invited
to submit her works for inclusion in a Group of Seven exhibition, the
beginning of her long and valuable association with the Group. They
named her 'The Mother of Modern Arts' around five years later. The
Nuu-chah-nulth of Vancouver Island's west coast had nicknamed Carr, Klee
Wyck, "the laughing one." She gave this name to a book about her
experiences with the natives, published in 1941. The book won the
Governor General's Award that year.
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