Seven Journeys: The Sketchbooks of Emily Carr - Taschenbuch

The previously unpublished drawings in Seven Journeys: The Sketchbooks of Emily Carr document the pivotal moment when the legendary artist abandoned purely representational imagery for the spiritually inspired abstraction that ultimately made her famous. Author Doris Shadbolt--a Governor General's Award-winning art historian--takes a less-is-more approach in presenting these rare records of sketching trips Carr made to northwest coastal Native communities and eastern Canada between 1927 and 1930, with remarkable results.

Now housed in the British Columbia Archives in Carr's hometown of Victoria, the sketches are almost never put on display, as the original images literally are crumbling, since Carr used cheap notebooks with paper even lower in grade than newsprint. Clearly the artist did not intend these images to serve posterity, using sheets in random order and making very few notes about dates and locations. Yet as documentation of the artist's single most important creative breakthrough, they remain invaluable.

In the course of researching her two previous books on Carr, Shadbolt developed a deep understanding of the importance of these fragile sketches. Shadbolt reconstructs a chronology for the creation of the 85 images selected for reproduction, with brief but illuminating text--often citing Carr's own writings--placing each picture firmly in context within Carr's life and artistic development. The duotone illustrations are first rate, as is Shadbolt's scholarship, and Seven Journeys stands as an important addition to the literature on Emily Carr. --Deirdre Hanna