Marilyn Jones | Emily Carr Chronicler

Emily Carr at 100: How the 1971 Centennial Exhibition Changed the Way Canada Saw Her

Published: 10 September, 2026
Written by Marilyn Jones

The 1971 Centennial Exhibition of Emily Carr was a particularly important exhibition in the history of Carr scholarship and in the Vancouver Art Gallery’s presentation of her work. It was much more than a commemorative birthday exhibition: it helped establish the framework through which Carr was understood for the next several decades. The official title was Emily Carr: A Centennial Exhibition Celebrating the One Hundredth Anniversary of Her Birth.

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Why Emily Carr Kept a Can of Gasoline Beside Her Easel

Published: 4 September, 2026
Written by Marilyn Jones

Beginning around 1932, Carr largely abandoned traditional watercolour for her field studies. Instead, she began using oil paint (and sometimes house paint) thinned with gasoline on manilla paper, creating a medium that combined the fluidity of watercolour with the rich colour and permanence of oil. This technique became central to many of her finest forest paintings of the 1930s. Read more: Emily Carr at 100: How the 1971…

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Doris Shadbolt and Emily Carr: A Legacy Discovered, Interpreted and Preserved

Published: 3 September, 2026
Written by Marilyn Jones

Doris Shadbolt (November 28, 1918 – December 22, 2003) occupies a distinctive place in the history of Emily Carr. She did not know Carr personally—Carr died in 1945, the same year Shadbolt moved to Vancouver—but over the next three decades Shadbolt became one of the people most responsible for shaping how Carr’s art was understood, exhibited and written about. Her relationship with Carr was therefore not one of friendship or personal acquaintance,…

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