Life & Mortality Quote by Emily Carr

Spring arrives here less as a season than as a mandate: get out, shed the husk, rejoin the living. Carr’s exclamation has the impatience of someone who’s been indoors too long - physically, yes, but also aesthetically. “My old things seem dead” isn’t just a complaint about clutter or stale routines; it’s the artist’s dread of repetition, the fear that yesterday’s forms have calcified into mannerism. The line cuts because it’s unsentimental. Carr doesn’t romanticize what came before. She declares it inert, then moves on.

The verbs do the real work: “go out,” “feel,” “get,” “want.” They’re bodily, almost urgent, making inspiration sound less like a muse and more like oxygen. Even “fresh contacts” carries a social-electrical charge: contact as touch, contact as connection, contact as the spark between the self and a world that can still surprise you. Carr frames renewal as something you pursue, not something bestowed.

In context, this reads like a credo from an artist who made her name by seeking what felt raw and immediate - forests, coastal villages, the thrum of weather and land - in a Canada that often preferred tame scenery and polite culture. “More vital searching” is a rejection of the safe studio loop. It’s also a subtle admission that vitality is perishable; if you don’t keep moving toward it, you lose it. Carr isn’t praising springtime. She’s using it as leverage to restart her own seeing.