Emily Carr and the Theatre of Transcendence

Throughout her career, Emily Carr’s art was informed by a questioning of organized religion. This was strengthened through her encounters with Lawren Harris, a founding member of the Group of Seven and a proponent of Theosophy, in the mid-1920s. From 1930 on, Carr focused much of her activity as a painter on her vision of nature as a “god-like” vehicle that held out the possibility for linking consciousness to a realm beyond earth-bound human culture.
 
This exhibition includes paintings and drawings of the forest produced by Carr from 1930 through to the early 1940s that are representative of her interest in transcendence and the natural world. It also looks at the desire for transcendence in contemporary culture. In addition to Carr, artists represented in the exhibition include Karin Buba? Lawren Harris, Euan Macdonald, Richard Prince, Kevin Schmidt, Steven Shearer, Mina Totino and Theodore Wan.