Emily Carr

Emily Carr was born in Victoria, British Columbia, in 1871 and lived most of her life there. She painted the villages and carved poles of the First Nations of the coast and the deep green forests of British Columbia, and for most of her career hardly anyone in Canada paid attention. Recognition came late in her life, and she turned to writing as well: her first book, Klee Wyck, won the Governor General's Award in 1941.

Today she is treated as a national treasure. She left 157 of her works to the Vancouver Art Gallery, which is why it holds so much of her painting, and it is a stop on our Vancouver walk, in the old provincial courthouse that Arthur Erickson converted into the gallery in the early 1980s. Look for the late forest pictures, where the trees seem to move.