When Carr visited New York in 1930, she met Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) and saw the work being done by some of the American and European modernists—Arthur Dove (1880–1946), Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), and Georges Braque (1882–1963).   During this crucial period an expanded vision emerges in Carr’s art, characterized by a sharp increase in abstraction, which she developed in part through a series of finished studio charcoal drawings on manila paper. She had access to the abstract work of Bertram Brooker (1888–1955), reproduced in Yearbook of the Arts in Canada, 1928–1929, a copy of which was sent to her by friends in Toronto.   Grey, 1929–30, is a fine example of this development and the influence of O’Keeffe in particular. Its ambiguous space is heightened by the reduction of colour, suggesting a liminal spiritual space with its own purely formal terms of reference. The concerns of representation have taken a back seat to the spiritual possibilities of abstraction. Carr reveals similar concerns in Tree Trunk, 1931, where she seems to focus the spiritual power of growth and the energetic life force into a sweeping phallus-like form. Now serving as a tool for abstraction, her French colour training allows for unmitigated violet, yellow, and red passages.   This Spotlight is excerpted from Emily Carr: Life & Work by Lisa Baldissera.