Emily Carr (1871 – 1945), Tangle, c.1937, oil on paper board, 61 x 94 cm, Mayberry Fine Art.

Emily Carr was a voyager deep into the wilderness of her native Canada. Influenced by the cosmogonies and art of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest, her paintings hum with a mycelial dynamism, almost hallucinatory in its impressionistic overtones – one senses she is rendering and being rendered by an animate nature she had come to apprehend. The unpeopled landscapes are very much alive, often carrying ominous and uncanny vibes. She painted deforestation and named it ‘Wasteland’, and was associated with Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, but remained unique in her courageousness. DH