Description
Emily Carr (1871–1945) painted the forests of British Columbia as if they were alive — because to her, they were. In Artist Emily Carr and the Spirit of the Land, published by Routledge in 2015, psychologist Phyllis Marie Jensen offers a fascinating Jungian portrait of one of Canada's most beloved artists, reading Carr's life and work through the lens of depth psychology. Jensen traces Carr's journey from a rebellious Victorian childhood through years of obscurity, her electrifying encounters with Indigenous art and culture, and her late-life breakthrough into the swirling, spiritual landscapes that made her famous. Through concepts like individuation, the shadow, and the collective unconscious, Jensen illuminates what drove Carr's art: a lifelong search for meaning, wholeness, and communion with the land.
Neither a conventional biography nor a dry academic study, this is a book for art lovers curious about the inner life behind the paintings — and for psychology readers drawn to a vivid case study of creativity itself. The Jungian framework earns its place here because Carr's own story fits it so naturally: the long years of being ignored, the sense of being out of step with her time, and then the late flowering when her inner world and her subject finally met. Jensen uses that framework to explain the paintings rather than to reduce them, showing how Carr's forests became a language for experiences she could not put into words — solitude, reverence, and a feeling of belonging to a landscape rather than merely depicting it. You will come away seeing her famous canvases differently, as records of a spiritual journey as much as studies of trees.
A rich, thoughtful portrait of an artist who painted her soul onto canvas. Explore it in ebook form at a discount from Tellebook.
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