PROVENANCE
Dominion Gallery, Montreal
Acquired from the above by a Private Collector, Vancouver, January 12, 1955
Private Collection, Vancouver

LITERATURE
Doris Shadbolt, The Art of Emily Carr, 1979, page 159
Maria Tippett, Emily Carr: A Biography, 1979, a similar work entitled Tossed by the Wind reproduced page 245

Emily Carr turned to the medium of oil on paper in the early 1930s, and its use as a replacement for watercolour was a breakthrough for her. She mixed her oil paint with turpentine and even gasoline, which enabled her to achieve different paint textures – from the thinness of a watercolour wash to the density of undiluted oil paint. The medium dried quickly and kept the intensity of colour given by oil paint. Its fluid nature enabled her to spontaneously work through more variations of her ideas as she painted out-of-doors. In Wind in the Woods, Carr’s acute awareness of the energy that animates all of nature is evident – here the ethereal element of air dominates form, its movement creating a path through the dense trees. Doris Shadbolt quotes Carr's observations on a windy day, “Everything is eternally on the quiver with wind. It runs on the short dry grass and sluices it as if the earth were a jelly…I think trees love to toss and sway; they make such happy noises.”

All prices are in Canadian Dollars