Professor Landon Mackenzie and Emily Carr at VAG
Professor Landon Mackenzie has had a long relationship with Emily Carr University – she began teaching visual arts at the institution in 1986, and has seen it grow through several official designations. But it could be argued that Mackenzie has had an even longer relationship with Emily Carr (1871 – 1945), the woman, painter, writer and overlooked pioneer of modernism. Although born in very different historical periods, they each faced cultural influences that shaped their work and, at times, forced them to work outside of conventional practices to interpret the environment in which they lived and created.
Although Mackenzie did not begin her career as an Emily Carr scholar, her move to the West Coast to teach at the namesake art school meant that she, like most other artists working in British Columbia, had to face the very present legacies of Carr, both positive and negative. Instead of accepting the prevalent assessment of Carr, Mackenzie chose to discover for herself the details of Emily Carr’s life and to use that knowledge to inform her understanding of Carr’s work. That deeper understanding is the basis for her current exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Emily Carr and Landon Mackenzie: Wood Chopper and the Monkey, which presents 50 works between the two. Landon Mackenzie’s dialogue with Emily Carr illuminates correlations between the two artists, but still allows for the differences in their lives and art to show through. It is a conversation on how common experiences, lived eight decades apart, created two careers in which parallels can be drawn.
For Mackenzie, the Dulwich exhibition is a perfect example of a shift in the understanding of Emily Carr and her work. The Dulwich Picture Gallery is England’s first purpose-built public art gallery, founded in 1811, and has a strong scholarly focus. A Carr exhibition at the Dulwich signals an improved approach to the appreciation and understanding of Carr as an important and innovative artist. Mackenzie points to the inclusion of Emily Carr in dOCUMENTA (13), the influential contemporary art fair held every five years in Kassel, Germany, as another significant example of this shift. No other historical Canadian painter has been given this honor, including any members of the Group of Seven. The organizers of dOCUMENTA (13) placed an emphasis on female modernists from the early part of the 20th century, many of whom had been marginalized in traditional art history.
Mackenzie believes Carr is finally emerging from that disregarded group, and seesdOCUMENTA (13), the Dulwich Picture Gallery and her own exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery, as clear examples of a change in perception regarding Emily Carr’s place in history.
To see more of Landon Mackenzie’s works, please visit landonmackenzie.com
For more information on Emily Carr and Landon Mackenzie: Wood Chopper and the Monkey, please visit vanartgallery.bc.ca
For more information on From the Forest to the Sea: Emily Carr in British Columbia, please visit dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk