From the Forest to the Sea

Emily Carr captures the natural and cultural landscapes of British Columbia like no other artist before or after her. From the Forest to the Sea: Emily Carr in British Columbia gathers work from all phases of this extraordinary artist's career -- from her delicate early watercolours of the 1890s to her bold painterly hybrids of the 1930s and 1940s, which marry European and North American Modernist traditions with the formal stylizations of Indigenous design. Carr's lifelong fascination with British Columbia's original inhabitants transformed her. Visiting First Nations villages up and down the coast, she absorbed the essence of the place she loved so well. Those experiences changed her life and charged her work, inspiring her imagination. This monumental volume features more than 100 colour reproductions of Carr's work, including some of her most renowned paintings, in dialogue with dozens of Indigenous artifacts from the Pacific Northwest: historic masks, baskets and ceremonial objects by Haida, Kwakwaka'wakw, Nuu-chah-nulth, Salish, Tlingit and Tsimshian makers. Drawn from public and private collections, including the British Museum, the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford, Horniman Museum and Gardens, and the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, these artifacts illuminate Carr's connections to Indigenous cultures and allow readers to contemplate the attachment to landscape from both European and Indigenous perspectives.