University of Calgary

PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository

Graduate Studies Legacy Theses

2008

Biographical portraits: exploring identity, gender, and

teaching in narrative representations of Canadian
artists

Jagger, Patricia

Jagger, P. (2008). Biographical portraits: exploring identity, gender, and teaching in narrative
representations of Canadian artists (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary,
AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/1796
http://hdl.handle.net/1880/102797
master thesis

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 UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

Biographical Portraits: Exploring Identity, Gender, and Teaching in Narrative

Representations of Canadian Artists

By

Patricia Jagger

A THESIS

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE DEGREE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

GRADUATE DIVISION OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

CALGARY, ALBERTA

JANUARY, 2008

© Patricia Jagger 2008

 UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

The undersigned certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate

Studies for acceptance, athesis entitled "Biographical Portraits: Exploring Identity,

Gender, and Teaching in Narrative Representations of Canadian Artists" submitted by

Patricia Jagger in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts.

Supervisor, Dr. E. Lisa Padayotidis, Graduate Division of

Educational Research

/ 4.

Dr. Hans Smits, Graduate Division of Educational

Research

Dr. - e - elnyk, Faculty o Corn ication and Culture

Date

11
 Abstract

In this thesis Iengage in acritical and interdisciplinary examination of the intersections

between film and life writing when exploring issues of representation, gender, and

identity. At the centre of this is the pivotal question—where are all the women artists? I

trace how my professional experience in the Canadian film industry and my studies in

education led me to discover five Canadian documentary films, each offering insight into

the experiences of male and female artists in Canada, predominantly around the time of

the Group of Seven (1920-1933). Through these films Iwas introduced to Doris

McCarthy (1910-present), an artist-teacher who appears in two of the five films and

whose collection of life writings are central to this thesis. At the foundation of this study

is the intent to show that these modes of communication offer educative possibilities for

imagining the multiple histories that exist in our world.

111
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Completing my Master of Arts has been apersonally rich endeavour, one that Icould not

have completed without the ongoing and unfailing support of an amazing group of

individuals. Throughout this journey it is those whose faith has never wavered and who

have never questioned why Iam on this path that have offered the greatest inspiration.

To the following Iextend the greatest thanks:

Lisa Panayotidis for always respecting my decisions, having the patience to wait for me

to catch up, then knowing when to push, pull, and prod me to challenge myself.

Michael Brandman for his unconditional support and unshakable belief in me.

Jane Saunders for asafe haven and her generous spirit, which remains unrivaled in my

life.

Michele Moss for helping me to remember, even in the most difficult moments, to

breathe, dance, laugh, and rejoice.

Jemison Jackson for reminding me to slow down and enjoy the journey while being my

voice of reason and calm.

Hans Smits and George Melnyk for taking the time to be on my committee and offering

their insights into my work.

A special thank you to my parents, Bob and Marion Jagger for their patience and support

over the years and helping to foster my love for life-long learning. Finally, my dog Jake

who has been my constant companion, for always loving and trusting me know matter

where Itake him!

iv
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Approval Page ii
Abstract iii
Acknowledgements iv
Table of Contents v

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

Making Connections: Education, Film, and Life Writing 1
"Where Are All the Great Woman Artists?" 8
Rethinking History: Creating New Spaces 11
Weaving the Web: Introducing the Work 13

CHAPTER TWO:
Exploring Theory: Seeking Understanding of Hermeneutics, Feminist
Film Theory and Narrative 19
Exploring Visual Culture in Educational Contexts 20
The FWords: Feminism and Film 24
The Interpretive Spaces In-Between . 30
Memory, Imagination, and Narrative 36
Autobiography and Gender: Forging Spaces 39
Unpacking Autobiography: Narrative Styles of Life Writing 42

CHAPTER THREE:
The Artist on Film: Canadian Teaching Narratives and
Gender as Portrayed through the Lens 45
Locating Canada on Film: Production Policies 47
Feminist Film Practices at the NFB 50
Filmic Representations of the Male Artist . 53
The Female Artist on Film . 57

CHAPTER FOUR
Recovering Memory: The Life Writing of Doris McCarthy 71
"A Fool in 'Paradise" and "The Good Wine" 76
One Last Story: The Latest Auto/biography 88
Doris McCarthy: Artist/Educator/Woman 91

CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION

Acknowledging the Gray: The Stories In-Between 94

REFERENCES 105

v
 1
Introduction: Making Connections: Education, Film, and Life Writing

Whenever Iheard, read, or wrote narratives, meaning took shape. Icould

understand why people did what they did, that what happened to people made

them the way they were. Ilearned that narratives were places where people had

the freedom and responsibility to tell the truth, however difficult. And Ihave

subsequently seen how the power of good narrative lends itself to the contextual,

complex, and chaotic matrixes of educational research. (Fowler, 2003, p. 162)

***

In his CBC Massey Lecture series, The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative (2003),

Thomas King tells us "the truth about stories is that's all we are" (p. 153). Stories have

always been the easiest way for me to make meaning and sense of the world we live in,

whether it is through losing myself in anovel or escaping to the anonymous, darkness of

amovie theatre. Accordingly, Ibegin my thesis with astory as away of inviting and

engaging others into the inquiry that follows.

In September 2001, after five years of working full time in the film industry as ascript

supervisor, Ireturned to school and entered the Master of Teaching Program at the

University of Calgary. This was amomentous occasion for me. Personal and

professional circumstances had caused me to become unsure if Iwanted to continue

working in film. The business of making movies is highly competitive, especially in a

 2
small film community like that in Calgary; to achieve any level of success requires

diligence and sacrifice. Over the preceding five years Ihad persevered through the

financial challenges of volunteer training for ayear to learn my craft, followed by four

more years of struggling to prove my abilities. Consisting completely of contract work,

those years confronted me with some complex realizations regarding working in a

competitive freelance business. To embark on alife working in film was to accept alife

of feast or famine, extremely long workdays, and the subsequent impact these factors can

have on all aspects of one's life.

Starting out as avolunteer script trainee on avariety of film productions in 1995, Iwas

eager to learn the skills required for the job. Iwas incredibly passionate about movies,

both with regard to making them as well as the belief that they were apowerful medium

of communication in our world. Iloved just being on set, watching with fascination as

the grips, electrics, and camera departments all worked together to light and compose

every shot. To many it must seem like watching paint dry (I know this to be true as over

the years Ihave invited many family and friends to set only to watch their eager

anticipation of meeting movie stars and seeing magic happen turn quickly to boredom

and disappointment!) but for me, this was the only life Icould imagine living. For almost

ayear, Ivolunteered on anumber of both film and television productions and with three

different seasoned script supervisors. Every day Iwould show up at call time and stay

until camera wrap, soaking in the atmosphere of organized chaos that is always present in

the process of making movies. Then finally, following aseries of practical tests, and an

unfortunate accident—the script supervisor on one show was hit on the head by apiece of
 3
equipment and had to go to the Emergency Room forcing me to step up to take her

place—I was deemed ready and given my first opportunity to undertake the position of

script supervisor on the feature film The Edge (1997). With agreat sense of importance

and accomplishment Iaccepted the job believing Ihad found the one thing Iwas meant to

do in this world.

Cut to five years later:

The time Ihad spent working in the film industry taught me some very difficult lessons

regarding the nature of survival in afreelance business guided by its own logic. What I

had come to realize is that the position of script supervisor is atechnical position

therefore limiting in its potential for contributing to the creative and imaginative process

of filmmaking. Ihad also come face to face with the fact that Ifelt restricted in how

and/or if my voice was heard in the world of film, at least on the sets Iworked on.

Perhaps most surprisingly, Ihad discovered that the film industry is abusiness ruled by

hierarchies and patriarchies; while technology has advanced greatly in the last 100 years

capitalist ideologies continue to enact unspoken codes of conduct, which shape how films

are made, by whom, and to what ends. The professional and personal experiences I

encountered during the first five years of my career left me struggling for asense of self

and aneed to discover anew way to express myself in the world. Although unable to

name it at the time, Inow recognize that Iwas engaged in abattle to reclaim the very

things that had originally inspired me to pursue acareer in film. In part, this meant

rediscovering the sense of wonder and imagination that Ihad once felt while sitting in a

movie theatre and watching astory unfold on the screen. Intertwined with this need to
 4
reawaken my love for visual narrative, was aneed to reclaim agreater sense of whom I

was and what Iwanted to contribute to the world. The film industry is indeed aworld of

illusions - of financial success, glamourous people, and false magic. Mixed in with that

are the realities of sexism, ego, nd hegemonies created by who controls the amount of

work and, subsequently, who receives it. What Ihad come to realize is that Icould no

longer recognize why Ihad entered the business; my love for story and cinema had been

displaced, my identity had been lost.

Ironically, this led to astrong desire to return to university, asurprising realization as

upon graduating with my Bachelor of Arts degree six years earlier Ihad vowed Iwould

never darken the doors of ahigher education institution ever again! At my parent's

insistence and despite my objections, Ientered university for the first time immediately

after high school. At the time Idid not feel that Iwas ready to make what felt like the

penultimate decision of what Iwas going to "be" when Igrew up. While Ienvisioned

myself returning to school one day, my preference would have been to take some time to

travel and work before embarking on post-secondary studies. My father and mother had

not attended university, making it acritical venture for their children. Given that my

older sister had entered into university right after high school, the expectation was that I

would do the same. As aresult, Ifloundered during my early undergraduate years,

changing my major from Drama to English to Anthropology, continually searching for

the subject that would capture my imagination as apotential career. As Ireflect on that

time in my life, Irecognize it had atremendous impact on how my interest in developing

asense of agency in the world has evolved. Reflecting on my earlier experiences, as a

 5
student as well as the time that followed working in the film industry, the importance

and complexity of finding avoice through which Icould express my own desires became

apparent. Returning to school and while immersed in the Master of Teaching

programme, Ibecame cognizant that my identity is framed by specific events in my life

as astudent, woman, and filmmaker. While my decision to pursue teaching and

education evolved partially out of many previous jobs and volunteer work with young

people, Ialso believed that as ateacher Icould have avoice, which Grumet (1990) refers

to as the possibility of "presence, contact, and relations that take[s] place within the range

of another's hearing" (p. 278). Ultimately, allowing me to contribute to my students

search for their own sense of being. What Iknow now, that Icould not name then, is that

Iwas seeking aplace to rediscover my own passion for learning as well as the

opportunity to reopen my imagination to the world.

My first day of classes in the Master of Teaching programme was September 10, 2001.

As it turned out, this proved to be one of the most complex and meaningful times to be

immersed in aprogramme dedicated to inquiry and critical thinking. September 11th was

my second day of classes and, along with millions of others Iawoke to the infamous

attack on the World Trade Center towers in New York. While Istood in front of the

television, watching the NBC Today Show with shock and disbelief, Iwitnessed the

second tower being struck. It was very difficult to tear myself away from the events

unfolding on the television. In addition to the incredulity Ifelt, my sister lived in

Washington, D.C. at the time and Icouldn't help but be worried for the safety of both her

and my brother-in-law. Iarrived late for my first class that morning and to my surprise
 6
few of my classmates were aware of what was going on in the United States. My

professor, Lisa Panayotidis, knowing that these were important events to unpack, gave

the class time to discuss what was happening and how we felt about it. At that time, so

early in the sequence of events that have since been identified as 9/11, little was known

and much was speculated. Over the weeks that followed the footage of the planes hitting

the twin towers of the World Trade Center were played and re-played on every television

network and news broadcast. The world was captivated, or perhaps more appropriately,

held captive by the images published on every magazine and newspaper. In addressing

the importance of including media literacy into schools, Elizabeth Daley (2003) refers to

9/11 as a"historic cinematic moment," asking "what would it be like to try to fully share

[this] and other momentous events without access to the language and power of the

screen" (p. 174)? In the months that followed, the importance and the mutability of

language became evident as the words "freedom" and "heroes" were appropriated and

redefined by President George W. Bush and the American administration.

Simultaneously, educators and scholars were reflecting on these events, the heightened

need to "find away of understanding the 'other," and the recognition that "possibilities

are multiple... [noting] we have to pay heed, as never before, to contexts, to the notion

of freedom for, not solely freedom from" (Pace, 2002, p. 34-35). Iwas not in New York

City that day, nor am Ian American; however, Ilike everyone else with access to a

television or the Internet, witnessed recurring images that will be forever embedded in

our collective cultural memory. This is not athesis about September 11th, however I

cannot separate the impact of that day and the manner in which it was taken up in the

world from what Ihave come to think of as my own turn towards the interpretive. For
 7
what was represented in the media and by the American government as an isolated event

and that gave rise to the ultimate dualistic Neo-liberal ideology—"You are either with us

or against us"—has led to many discussions regarding the nature of language, the

importance of critical thinking, the power of visual images and the notion that there is a

complex and intricate relationship among the past, present, and future. While Imay not

have been able to articulate it at the time, what began to take shape that day was anew

discovery of the interconnections between what we see/read, the meaning or

interpretation that emerges out of that reading, and how this informs the way we engage

with the world around us. Over the next two years, while involved in the Master of

Teaching programme at the University of Calgary, Ifound moments to explore these

understandings as both astudent and ateacher, but it wasn't until Ientered the graduate

programme that Iwas able to delve deeper; exploring the power of the

visual/narrative/identity, the act of interpretation, and the nature of critical inquiry.

While Ithought Iwas taking steps away from my life in film and my love for the visual, I

was unwittingly starting down anew path that would allow me to engage with this

passion in adeeper, more critical, and theoretical manner.

Since September 11th iconic images of that day have saturated our environment. The

face of Osama bin Laden has been burned into the cultural conscious of the Western

world as have the images of Saddam Hussein's capture and execution, the video footage

of the 2004 Tsunami, and more recently the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina. For

an emerging educator this is achallenging time, as the import of visual narratives

becomes an increasingly undeniable facet of how we make sense of the world in which
 8
we live. My experiences as astudent, both in the Master of Teaching programme and in

graduate school, as well as my time in the classroom as ateacher, have lead me to delve

into visual culture and the notion of visual literacy. What has emerged is an interest in

understanding how the visual, particularly in film images and their attendant narratives,

interconnects past and present.

"Where Are All the Great Women Artists"- Discovering the Question

The question that recurs throughout this thesis is "where are all the great woman artists?"

The first time this was brought to my attention was on viewing the film The Other Side of

the Picture (1998), adocumentary produced by the National Film Board of Canada.

Perhaps like many others, my knowledge of Canadian art was limited to knowing mainly

about the Group of Seven - agroup of male, Canadian painters who first exhibited

together in May 1920 and who "developed adoctrine and astyle of painting based on the

idea that Canadian art could find sufficient sustenance in Canada alone" (Reid, 1973, p.

134). The only female Canadian artist Ihad any in-depth knowledge of was Emily Carr,

whose own artwork, according to art historian Dennis Reid (1973), was influenced by the

Group of Seven (p. 156). Most important to my awareness of Canadian art was the

veritable veneration of landscape, which took root from 1920-1933 and was popularized

by the Group of Seven whose "vigorous gestures, bold palette, and northern panoramas

broke with the restrictive confines of European academic tradition, creating anew
 9
interpretation of the native landscape? (Millar, 1992, P. 3). Canadian collective identity

became linked to images of the land. Viewing The Other Side of the Picture Iwas

introduced to another Canadian landscape artist, Doris McCarthy, who was previously

unknown to me. McCarthy was not only aprodigious and accomplished artist, but was

also (I was struck to discover) along time art teacher (40 years) at Central Technical

School in Toronto, Ontario.

McCarthy' sexperience as an artist-teacher was of great interest to me. Through my work

as agraduate research assistant, Iwas introduced to the interconnected history of arts and

education in Canada. Through the research projects on which Iwas participating, Ihad

learned about organizations such as the Federation of Canadian Artists and the Ontario

Society for Education in the Arts, which were led primarily by artist-teachers. By World

War II, these organizations assumed an important role in social reconstruction, believing

that art in education could "re-shape the home, community, and nation into apre-

industrial version of the aesthetic 'good society" (Panayotidis, 2002, 6). Such

understandings had asubstantive impact on the evolution of art education in Canada in

the early twentieth century and in many ways continue to reverberate through our society

and classrooms to this day.

Intrigued by the way in which Doris McCarthy spoke of and gave meaning to her

experience, as both an artist and ateacher, in The Other Side of the Picture Iperformed a

search of National Film Board (NFB) films to see if there were any other documentary

films made on the subject of female artists. Idiscovered the film By Woman's Hand,
 10
produced in 1994, which focused on an artists' group called the Beaver Hall Hill

Group that existed in Montreal in the early 1920's. Although this group consisted of both

male and female members, the film examined the lives of artists: Prudence Heward

(1896-1947); Anne Savage (1896-1971); and Sarah Robertson (1891-1948). This film

was of great interest to me as these particular female artists, although contemporaries of

the Group of Seven, were unknown to me and perhaps to many others. Iwas compelled

by their stories and as they unfolded on the screen Ifound myself returning to the

question first brought to my attention in The Other Side of the Picture—where are all of

the women artists? Seeking to learn more about these women, their art, and the world in

which they lived, Ireviewed these films and began to wonder how their lives and

experiences connected to my own as an educator, afilmmaker, and awoman. What

emerged was aseries of questions regarding how women's experience has been

included/excluded from history and how this informs women today, as they search for a

sense of agency and identity in the world.

As Icontinued my search, the third film Idiscovered was Doris McCarthy: Heart of a

Painter (1986), produced by Wendy Wacko Productions. While not produced by the

NFB it provided an intimate portrayal of Doris McCarthy's life as an artist after retiring

from teaching. Further to her involvement with these films, Ilearned that McCarthy had

written aseries of autobiographies chronicling her life from childhood through to her

nineties. Having begun my journey with the question—where are all the women

artists?—it was becoming evident that Ihad discovered one female artist who was eager,

if not to answer that particular question, to ensure that her presence as an artist was not
 11
lost to history like so many other women artists before her. As Iengaged in my own

reflexive dialogue with these varied texts, both visual and written, Iwas intrigued to

discover that these two mediums of communication had their own rich histories, which

intertwine and inform the cultural and performative nature of gender studies today.

Rethinking History: Creating New Spaces for Multiple Voices

What Ihave come to realize over the last few years, through my own studies in education

as well as my experiences in filmmaking, is that my love for film is merely an extension

of alarger love/need for storytelling; the sharing of our experience in the world through a

narrative form of expression, whether that be through the reading of astory, the watching

of afilm, or examining apainting or photograph. These modes of expression, Maxine

Greene (2000) has noted, provide powerful prospects for the creation of new openings as,

"stories, poems, dance performances, concerts, paintings, films, plays - all have the

potential to provide remarkable pleasure for those willing to move out toward them and

engage with them" (p. 27). However, in the midst of celebrating these possibilities it

must be recognized that such artistic creations have been historically controlled by

patriarchal discourses and practices, which have excluded the voices of the Other.

Omitting the voices of women creates avacuum as they have been 'hidden from history,'

that is, systematically excluded from most historians' accounts of the past. Accordingly,

feminists are now engaged in the task of 'writing women back into history" (Jenkins,

2003, p. 9). Current interpretive theories of the past suggest that history (or his—story) is

subjugated by adominant discourse from which women have long been excluded.
 12
Despite any assumed successes, fighting to create aframework through which

women's stories (perhaps aher—story) can be told continues to be achallenge ,in our

world today. In his book, Re-thinking History (2003), Keith Jenkins informs us that

"history is one of aseries of discourses about the world. These discourses do not create

the world (that physical stuff on which we apparently live) but they do appropriate it and

give it all the meanings it has" (p. 6). In the course of examining the films and life

writings discussed in this text Ihave been challenged to confront my understanding of

what history is and whose stories it represents. For as Glenn Jordan and Chris Weedon

(1995) note:

To be without history is to be trapped in apresent where oppressive social

relations appear natural and inevitable. Knowledge of history is knowledge that

things have changed and do change. Nothing is inevitable. History is one key

area where, until recently, women were virtually invisible. (p. 187)

Through my reading and experiences, Iam concerned to think through what might

constitute acollective cultural memory and how it impacts understanding of self within a

gendered, culturally, and historically specific time and place. For example, Doris

McCarthy, her perceived successes and failures, her dreams and hopes for her own life

were very much shaped by the time and place within which she lived and worked.

Grasping the contextualization of one's interpretive understandings is acritical notion in

this thesis, as is recognizing both documentary films and auto/biographies as modes of

remembering. Iam aware, as Stephanie Kirkwood Walker (1996) keenly articulates,

autobiography (and film) are: "Deceptive genre[s], positioned between fact and fiction

and elusive in its purposes, biography displays an individual life, an existence patterned
 13
by conventions that have also shaped the reader's experience" (p. 1). The question of

truth in the wake of imagination and memory echoes the complexity of these issues and

illustrates our need to examine them more carefully. Contrary to previously held beliefs,

the past lives in multiple teflings. Through acknowledging the power of memory and its

link to imagination, revisiting the past creates new and exciting sites of understanding for

identity. As Munro (1998) notes, "there is no identity outside narrative. Events or

selves, in order to exist, must be encoded as story elements" (p. 6). Through this study I

hope to open new spaces for understanding and constructing knowledge for women of all

ages as they struggle for asense of history and agency in today's world. Iaim to create a

deeper awareness of the fine lines that have been imposed on what we believe as fact,

what we easily dismiss as fiction and how they enact themselves upon how we construct

meaning.

Weaving the Web: Introducing the Work

In the process of exploring filmic representations of Canadian female artists and the life-

writings of Doris McCarthy Iquickly discovered that the scope of my research required

an interdisciplinary approach encompassing theoretical discourses surrounding visual

culture, feminist film theory, interpretive curriculum studies, and autobiography studies.

Chapter 2, entitled Exploring Theory: Seeking Understanding of Hermeneutics, Feminist

Film Theory and Narrative, seeks to build connections between various fields of study. I

begin by unpacking how Iwas introduced to contemporary studies in visual culture,

allowing me to draw from my own experience in the film industry as Iventured forward
 14
in my studies in education. As aresult, Ibecame attuned to feminist film theory and

notions of the male gaze. Through Laura Mulvey's seminal text, Visual Pleasure and

Narrative Cinema (1975), Ibriefly trace the evolution of theories examining how women

see themselves on the screen and how these images are created.

Encouraged to draw upon my career in the film industry, or my lived experience, Ifound

myself re-examining my encounters in the Master of Teaching programme, my work as a

research assistant, and my graduate work!Jprompting me to re-visit my past experiences

as astudent/filmmaker/woman. This act of retrieval and reflexiveness was largely forged

by my study of hermeneutics. Chapter 2builds upon an examination of visual culture

and feminist film theory and details the "nature" of hermeneutics. "Meanings [Josselson

notes] cannot be grasped directly and all meanings are essentially indeterminate in any

unshakeable way, interpretation becomes necessary. She adds, "this is the work of the

hermeneutic enterprise" (Josselson, 2004, p. 3). Central to my graduate study, it was the

work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, who "proposed hermeneutics as an interpretive,

historically conscious practice of working to achieve understanding" (Code, 2003, p. 4),

that emerged as most significant. By sharing an event from my own student experience, I

seek to locate this complex and historically rich approach to research, which is inclusive

of narrative accounts in its endeavour to discover what Gadamer called aletheia. Finally,

it is the importance of narrative Iseek to unravel in chapter 2, inquiring into how the

complexity of life writing opens up possibilities for women to locate and position

themselves in the world.

 15
In chapter 3Iinvestigate the history of documentary film in Canada and the role of the

National Film Board of Canada. Emerging after World War II as amajor cultural

institution, the NFB also engaged in social reconstructionist practices, aiming to forge

collective notions of nationhood. While Idelve deeper into the films previously

mentioned—The Other Side of the Picture (1998), By Woman's Hand (1994), and Doris

McCarthy: Heart of aPainter (1986)!Jthis Chapter also looks at two films representing

members of the Group of Seven, Canadian Landscape with A. Y. Jackson (194 1) and

Lismer (195 1) (examining the work of renowned art educator Arthur Lismer) which were

also produced by the NFB. In locating these films within both Canadian history and the

history of the NFB, Ireach new understandings with regard to the lives and experiences

of male and female artists in Canada as well as the different ways they are represented on

film. Finally, it is with acloser viewing of Doris McCarthy: Heart of aPainter, that a

more intimate view of Doris McCarthy emerges. In need of away to speak her way into

the world, McCarthy became for me the prominent female voice in these films - a

recurring "character" determined to define her own identity.

McCarthy' sresolve to distinguish herself as an artist, teacher, and woman is also starkly

implied in the series of autobiographies that are the topic of Chapter 4. McCarthy' sfirst

autobiographical memoir, A Fool in Paradise (1990), gives significant insight into her

life as ateacher and artist, documenting her life from birth (1910) until her early 40's

(1950). Her narrative is engaging as she speaks of her life as astudent, her relationships

with her family, childhood friends, and Arthur Lismer—who emerges as an important

and influential figure in her development as both an artist and ateacher. In chapter 4, 1
 16
attempt to deconstruct and make meaningful the manner in which she speaks about

herself and the significant people in her life. It was with great curiosity that Idiscovered

that she had continued the process of life writing with A Good Wine: An Artist Comes of

Age (1991), in which she chronicles her next 40 years, and the subsequent Ninety Years

Wise (2004), which offers aglimpse into the summer of her 92nd year. Finally, over the

period time that Ihave been writing my thesis, McCarthy has published afourth

autobiography, entitled My Life (2006) with co-author Charis Wahl. Combining excerpts

from A Fool in Paradise, The Good Wine, and Ninety Years Wise, this fourth publication

does not offer alot of new information about McCarthy's life. It is, however, amore

concise and streamlined amalgamation of her life story. Collectively, these life writings

lead me to question why McCarthy felt the need to consistently recount the narrative of

her life through autobiographical accounts both in text and on film.

The questions Iam tackling are not new. Issues of representation, gender, and identity

have been taken up in anumber of disciplines including gender studies, education,

anthropology, and film studies, to name only afew. Substantive scholarship undergirds

feminist film theory, autobiography studies, and visual culture, which all explore the

complex ways in which women's ideas of self have been and continue to be constructed,

and perhaps more crucially, how these attendant meanings inform society and the

opportunities afforded to women. Regardless of the wealth of scholarly work already

published, Iconstantly find myself engaging in conversations with women of all ages for

whom the experiences and struggles of those who have come before them have never

been explored or even questioned. Whether discussing the importance of women voting,
 17
the complexity of pursuing afulfilling career while also trying to have asuccessful

home life, or lamenting with female colleagues about the sexual harassment and

discrimination still suffered (sometimes unwittingly) by women working in the film

industry today, Iam often disturbed to bump up against alack of awareness surrounding

the discursive and hegemonic spaces that inform the way women perform in the world.

Greene (1990) encourages:

If women are in touch with themselves and in concrete communication with

others, they have aground against which to consider the mystifications that work

on them, Ibelieve it is necessary to look into the darkness, into the terrible

blankness that creeps over so many women's lives, into the wells of victimization

and powerlessness. (p. 20)

These are revelations that Ihave been exposed to through my graduate studies and that I

am still learning how to dwell within so that Imay make aconstructive contribution to

the ongoing struggle not only for women's stories to be heard but also those of other

disenfranchised people. In her own search for women artists Linda Nochlin (1988)

stated:

The arts as in ahundred other areas, are stultifying, oppressive, and discouraging

to all those, women among them, who did not have the good fortune to be born

white, preferably middle class, and above all, male. The fault lies not in our stars,

our hormones, our menstrual cycles, or our empty/internal spaces, but in our

institutions and our education - education understood to include everything that

happens to us from the moment we enter this world of meaningful symbols, signs,

and signals. (p. 148)

 18

Recursively returning to King's notion that "the truth about stories is that's all we are" (p.

153), Ihave discovered that stories can take many shapes and forms, all of which can

serve to create new opportunities for learning about one another. Whether written,

painted, filmed, danced, or spoken, our stories are what we carry with us and

subsequently leave behind. In the effort to respond to the provocative question of where

are all the women artists?, Idraw connections between the films and the life narratives of

Doris McCarthy. Iam hopeful that Ican add my voice to the ongoing conversation

regarding how we understand the lives lived by the women in these film narratives, as

well as listening/seeing for those women who may continue to live in silence and

marginalization.
 19

Exploring Theory: Seeking Understanding of Hermeneutics, Feminist Film

Theory and Narrative

Returning to the events of September 11th and the months that followed, the connections

that Iwas making while immersed in the Master of Teaching program largely had to do

with the discovery of the study of visual culture. Having spent the preceding years

working in abusiness involving the production of visual images, my initial months in the

teacher-training program offered me practical opportunities to connect my previous

experience with my studies. For example, while participating in acommunity work place

practicum through the Centre for Gifted Education, Iwas asked to put my knowledge of

editing to use by creating avideo out of the footage shot at their annual summer camp. I

also began working as aresearch assistant for Dr. Lisa Panayotidis, whose own research

in the areas of visual culture and arts education began to influence and shape my own

understandings. As part of that work Iwas invited to go on aresearch trip to the

University of Toronto archives in the spring of 2002 to research representations of the

professoriate in Torontonensis, the University of Toronto's yearbook. My first

introduction to archival research, this experience encouraged me to draw connections

between the past and the present. In the course of our time at the archives, many rich and

thought-provoking discoveries were made, and Ibegan to develop anew awareness

surrounding the complexity of interpreting texts, both visual and written.

Simultaneously, Iwas beginning to see the particular ways in which my own experience

intertwined with the interpretive work Iwas beginning to undertake. This resulted in the
 20
bursting forth of new and creative spaces for understanding and an emerging sense of

wonder—which Huebner cites as a"form of participating with the time and being of. We

are only free to the extent that we maintain and develop our capacity for wonder"

(Huebner, 1999, p. 6). A sense of wonder has become integral to my evolution as a

teacher, filmmaker, and woman.

Exploring Visual Culture in Educational Contexts

The power of visual images is everywhere in our world and their impact on how culture

evolves (or devolves) is irrefutable. In 1998, Rogof stated that the study of visual culture

was considered to be astill "emerging field" that has been characterized as opening "up

an entire world of intertextuality in which images, sounds, and spatial delineations are

read on to and through one another, lending ever-accruing layers of meaning and of

subjective responses to each encounter we might have with film, TV, advertising, art

works, building, or urban environments" (p. 14). In the preceding 10 years, this has also

grown to include the vast multitude of images presented to the world through access to

the Internet. Women and children, particularly, are inundated with images in magazines,

music videos, and in films that impress upon us ideas of how we are to act, speak and

look in the world. Maxine Greene (1990) has stated: "Film art, particularly, may be of

special relevance today because of the importance of the visual in our lives and people's

growing familiarity with the language of visual images" (101). Constructed through what

Gillian Rose (2001) refers to as modalities: the technological, the compositional, and the
 21
social, "interpretations of visual images broadly concur that there are three sites at

which the meanings of an image are made: the site(s) of the production of an image, the

site of the image itself, and the site(s) where it will be seen by various audiences." Rose

recognizes that "all visual representations are made in one way or another, and the

circumstances of their production may contribute towards the effect they have" (p. 16-

17). However, while educators are becoming familiar with the language of the visual -

one that Iargue is rooted in patriarchal discourses - we are not always critically aware

about what and whose voice these visual images represent. Over the course of my

graduate studies, Ihave engaged in amultitude of discussions with various people from

different areas of my life regarding my thesis and my research areas of interest. The

conversation always evolves in different ways, but what remains constant is that the

majority of people, while willing to admit to the power of the visual, are reluctant to open

themselves up to the cultural significance of what they see, or create if they are

filmmakers, and how it has embedded itself into one's everyday understanding of self

and, ultimately, how we live in the world.

The study of visual images and the impact they have on how critical understandings of

our world are formed spans across avariety of disciplines. In his seminal text, Downcast

Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century French Thought (1994), Martin

Jay notes the way "visual metaphors" arise in disciplinary contexts such as sociology,

anthropology, and linguistics. "Historians of technology [Jay notes] have pondered the

implications of our expanded capacity to see through devices as the telescope,

microscope, camera, or cinema." He continues to note that due to this "remarkable range
 22
and variability of visual practices, many commentators have been tempted to claim

certain cultures or ages have been 'ocularcentric,' or dominated by vision" (p. 3). In

Visual Methodologies (1990), Rose refers to Jay's notion of "ocularcentrism [in order] to

describe the apparent centrality of the visual to contemporary Western life" and as "part

of awider analysis of the shift from premodernity to modernity, and from modernity to

postmodernity" (p. 7). Currently, we live in atime where:

The profusion of images produced through film/video/television inform and

persuade us about our 'imaginary' selves in multiple forms of representation... In

television, every broadcast makes aconnection between the 'reality' of the image

and the cultural constructs operating within any given society. Therefore, each

narrative contains within its illusionistic framework acultural-

power to mediate

reality based upon actual historical happenings or events. (Gazetas, 2003, p. 191)

The importance of creating aspace for critical inquiry in our schools, and in our world,

for the visual should not be underestimated as, "by gaining an awareness of the cinematic

structures and genres used by most filmmakers, educators can gain anew understanding

of several key concepts such as culture, ideology, ethics, and aesthetics, as filmmakers re-

present and reinterpret events and people in their film narratives" (Gazetas, 2003, p. 191).

Attending critically to the visual world around us must be acknowledged as being more

complex than handing kids acamera or turning on the DVD player to allow them to be

swept away by the latest Hollywood rendition of aShakespeare play.

Ihave often participated in discussions with educators regarding the potential for

incorporating filmmaking into their lessons. During my student teaching practicum at an

 23
elementary school in Calgary, Iworked with acohort of teachers who had made a

video production of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit (1937), the previous school year. Upon

learning of my background in film production they were eager to discuss the complex

questions that had emerged through the process that they had shared with their students.

Through these conversations, it was suggested that while the world we are living in is

increasingly ocularcentric, our education system is still learning how to integrate visual

culture into the curriculum. As the predominance of visual culture becomes more and

more dominant, it must be recognized that:

Images are never transparent windows on to the world. They interpret the world;

they display it in very particular ways. Thus adistinction is sometimes made

between visual and visuality. Vision is what the human eye is physiologically

capable of seeing... Visuality, on the other hand, refers to the way in which vision

is constructed in various ways. (Rose, 2001, p. 6)

Through the creation of their own film, the students and teachers who produced The

Hobbit embarked on acomplex journey. Even the smallest-scale productions Ihave

worked on as aprofessional filmmaker have employed the expertise and talents of a

number of people, all with varying degrees of knowledge specific to the job they perform

on set. Large Hollywood productions employ hundreds of people, all responsible for

their own small piece of the storytelling process, culminating in the creation of avisual

text. Gazetas (2000) argues that "film narratives are politically committed and involved

in acultural 'politics of representation." With the evolution of home video technology

they "have become amajor source of visual information and expression about our world

in 'imagining ourselves" (p. 5). By integrating film into the curriculum these teachers
 24
opened up new and exciting educative opportunities for their students, collaboratively

making connections between the curriculum, the visual, and the narrative power of film.

In the process of becoming ateacher, these discussions forged new openings for me to

incorporate my experience of the film industry into my own emerging practice. As time

passed different questions began to take shape surrounding the intersections among film,

education, and the notion of 'imagining ourselves.' How did my career in the film

industry inform my studies in education? As Ibegan to tackle this question, the issue of

gender continually emerged as being relevant to how Iwould locate and describe my

experience, resulting in new inquiries into feminist film theory.

The F Words: Feminism and Film

During my first semester as agraduate student Iremember sitting across the room from

another white woman and listening to her say, "I don't understand why we need to use

the term feminism. What's wrong with humanism? We all live in the same world."

Perhaps those weren't her exact words, but they are close, and they were said in relation

to the use of afeminist research methodology. The words startled me, for while Ihave

not experienced great hardship in my life, Iam well aware that Iam positioned in this

world in aparticular way due to my gender, colour, socio-cultural background, and the

experiences to which these factors have afforded or limited me. Iwas shocked and

disturbed to be reminded how many women dismiss what has been, and continues to be,

an ongoing struggle for equality. Iwas equally shocked to discover that in aclass of
 25
about 20 "educated" graduate students, and in many cases educators, perhaps four or

five raised their hands in willingness to claim themselves afeminist. It seems, somehow,

in recent times, to call yourself the "f" word is to invite shock and disdain.

It is critical incidents like the one described above to which Ioften find myself returning

as Iengage in the process of writing, as they have led me to many of the questions Iam

exploring - What does it mean to be feminist in the world today? What did it mean 50,

or a100, years ago? Do women have agreater sense of agency today? How do visual

images—films in particular—impact how women see themselves and other women in the

world?

This past summer, Iwas asked to read ascript with the potential of employment on afilm

shooting in Winnipeg. One morning, with coffee in hand, Isat on the couch and opened

the emailed file on my computer expecting to read what had been described to me as a

"psychological thriller." What unfolded before my eyes was ascript, severely lacking in

story but filled with stereotypes about woman. Ironically, unlike many scripts that Iread

today, the majority of the characters were women. However, it was discouraging to see

that these characters embodied two stereotypical representations of women; of the four

female characters, the oldest fell under the categories of bitter and man-hating and, in

contrast, the younger women in the story, who were often referred to as "sluts" and

"whores" in the dialogue, were beautiful and sexually "liberated." As Isat and read

through the over 80 pages of horribly written dialogue Ikept hoping for some miraculous

narrative turn, hoping that the story would redeem itself and its characters. It never
 26
happened. Once Iwas finished Icalled the production manager, apleasant man with

whom Ihave worked in the past. He had informed me, prior to reading the script, that it

was avery rough draft and the director was revising it as we spoke. Iexpressed my

concern about working on aproject that treated women in such alimited and

stereotypical way. With anote of embarrassment in his voice he agreed with my

observation, but couldn't make any promises with regard to how the material would

evolve. What was most disturbing about this event was not necessarily the way the

women were written in the script (at this point in my film career little surprises me,

particularly the hollow crafting of female characters) but the admission by the production

manager, that until Idrew it to his attention he had not even noticed the demeaning and

stereotypical portrayal of women in the draft.

In 1975, when Laura Mulvey wrote her groundbreaking essay Narrative Cinema and

Visual Pleasure, she prompted an important discussion around representations of women

in film. Presenting the possibility of afeminist film theory, she posed critical questions

regarding the act of seeing within the context of gender. Mulvey's article:

Identifies three main arguments in this analysis of women's place in culture. The

first is the claim that women have, in fact, produced more mainstream culture

than has ever been recognized. The second, which in many ways runs counter to

the first, is the insistence on women's absence from cultural production, in

inverse proportion to the exploitation of female images in the subject matter of art

and popular culture. Finally, she argues, there was arevival of 'minor arts and
 27
crafts,' where women have produced cultural artifacts, in [a] however

marginalized and undervalued way. (Thornham, 1997, p. xiii)

Working from apsychoanalytic perspective, Mulvey questioned the idea of amale gaze

which assumed that, "all members of the cinema audience, whether male or female, are

positioned in the same way in relation to the figures on the screen and that all see them in

the same way" (Rose, 2001, p. 115). Creating a"cinepsychoanalysis," Mulvey and her

contemporaries sparked aconversation around the representations of women in film and

how the female identity is constructed on screen. Since the publication of Narrative

Cinema and Visual Pleasure (1975), work in feminist film theory has disputed the notion

that there is not aparticular female gaze. In Technologies of Gender (1987), Teresa de

Lauretis challenged Mulvey's original conception noting that:

When Ilook at movies, film theorists try to tell me that the gaze is male, the

camera eye is masculine, and so my look is also not awoman's. But Idon't

believe them anymore, because now Ithink Iknow what it is to look at afilm as a

woman. (p. 11)

De Lauretis interrupted the work of previous feminist film theorists, influenced by

Mulvey, who claimed that only those participating in the production of afilm, the pro-

filmic event, could offer insight regarding how it should be interpreted. In that theory,

the filmmakers destroy the potential for the audience members to participate in the

construction of meaning, as they watch the screen in front of them. This also refuted the

possibility for asubjective reading of the film as atext open to interpretation, by avariety

of agents, in front of the screen and behind the camera. Through her work, which moves

outside of psychoanalytic theories to the realm of poststructuralism and the attunement to

 28
the work of language, de Lauretis has created atextual in-between space in the

watching, or the reading, of films, that extends to the spectator's lived experience and

knowledge that he or she can bring to the film. Although de Lauretis' research is focused

on the notions of gender and feminist film theory, her work can also extend to both how

children, as well as other disempowered populations, live in the position of the "Other" in

our society, and how they are implicated in film watching and interpreting.

More recently, Laura Mulvey has addressed the criticisms and concerns of her earlier

interpretations within avastly different social context. Recognizing the technological

and societal evolutions that have occurred in the last three decades since she introduced a

feminist film theory, Mulvey (2004) has stated:

New technologies can transform the way that the cinema of the past is seen and

thus understood, creating afundamental paradox: while the electronic and digital

have aged the celluloid medium, they have also revitalized cinema and given new

life to its past. In the 1970s Iwrote about the voyeuristic spectator, my original

point of engagement with feminism and film theory. Then the concept depended,

in the first instance, on certain material conditions of cinema exhibition: darkness,

the projector beam lighting up the screen, the procession of images that imposed

their own rhythm on the spectator's attention. (p. 1288-1289)

Mulvey acknowledges that her original assertions, regarding how women view other

women in movies, do not hold true if one is to believe in interpretive spaces that are

inclusive of experience. As awoman who has participated in the mainstream film

community and culture, Icannot deny that the presence of the male gaze is predominant
 29
in both film and television. My experience has led me to question whether evolving

theories surrounding visual culture and gender have had much impact in the mainstream

world of filmmaking. Most women Ihave met who desire to move into positions such as

director and producer are forced to move outside of the mainstream into smaller, more

independent areas of production. Hollywood remains remarkably untouched by the

feminist movement as such productions are pieced together:

Generally [by] the gaze of aWhite middle-class male as those who enter the

profession are usually from the wealthier classes, with access to education or

contacts within the industry. The film industry is avery closed and guarded old

boys' club because of its glamour. (Dirse, 2003, p. 437)

The film and television productions watched by the majority of the viewing public are

still very much under the control of this "boys' club," creating aform of hegemony

through the visual which has ramifications for how identities are constructed, shaped, and

cast. In response, academics such as Mulvey have suggested that the only way for atrue

women's cinema must be located outside of the Hollywood system in the more avant-

garde and independent film world. However, while this does provide asite for the telling

of stories by those who are under-represented in contemporary films and television shows

produced by the studio system, it also works to maintain astatus quo where these

narratives are still being told from the margins. While the majority of people behind the

lens are men, specifically those who are most closely involved with the construction of

images such as the director, the director of photography, and the camera operator, women

have begun to make progress towards these positions. Women Filmmakers: Refocusing

(2003), edited by Jacqueline Levitin, offers avariety of female perspectives from female
 30
directors to film technicians with regard to the nature of working as awoman in the

film industry.

The Interpretive Spaces In-Between: "Pointing at the Moon"

Because the things of art have form, they invite perception and can be described.

Because things of art are deliberately bound in space and time, they are set off from the

tools of the trade, the bird's song, the neighbour's complaint, and the funeral cortege.

Anthropologists, philosophers, and art critics regularly inspect the boundary that

distinguishes art from life, seeking to understand them both. They examine the objects

that fall to either side of the line as well as the allegiances and manners of those who

identify with each territory. They are most intrigued when the border drawn between art

and life, due to frequent or infrequent crossings, falls into disrepair, requiring negotiation,

judgment and specification (Grumet, 1983, p. 29)

***

During my first semester of graduate studies Iwas handed an article in my "Studying

Curriculum" class, entitled Pedagogy of Buddhism (2003), that introduced me to the idea

of "pointing at the moon." Describing what the author called "failed pedagogy," it tells

the story of aperson attempting, unsuccessfully, to communicate with her cat:

Whenever Iwant my cat to look at something instructive—a full moon, say, or a

photograph of herself—a predictable choreography ensues. Ipoint at the thing I

want her to look at, and she, roused to curiosity, fixes her attention on the tip of
 31
my extended index finger and begins to explore it with delicate sniffs.

(Sedgwick, 2003, p. 168)

Meant to prompt discussion around the problematic nature of outcome-based education,

this reading raised complex questions surrounding what it means to teach as well as to

learn. During my teacher training, the difficulty of being agood teacher was often

discussed. Through revisiting our own experiences as students and reflecting on qualities

embodied by our own former teachers, my colleagues and Iwere able to quickly identify

the characteristics we did not wish to take into the classroom as educators.

During my years in the public education system, there was one encounter in particular

that stood out as reflective of what Sedgewick might call "failed pedagogy." This critical

incident occurred after Ihad finished writing my English 30 departmental exam in grade

12. Upon leaving the test Iran into my English teacher with whom Ihad always had a

contentious relationship. She inquired about the test, asking on which text from that year

Ihad chosen to focus my essay. Iresponded that Ihad chosen Horses of the Night (1967)

by Margaret Laurence, ashort story that had been afavourite of mine that year. When I

began to tell her about the essay Ihad written she looked at me quite plainly and stated,

"You are going to fail." My interpretation of the text differed from what she had taught

in class that year. As amatter of fact, we had agreed on little over the course of my time

in her classroom. She was far from my ideal teacher, as Iwas probably far from her ideal

student. However, it is that final interaction with her that stands out the most in my mind,

for it did not matter to her how effectively or eloquently Ihad made my argument, or that

the "true" meaning behind the text was not necessarily that which my teacher had taught
 32
in her classroom. It was that my gaze had not followed to where her finger had been

pointing that defined our relationship as student and teacher. We had failed one another.

Luckily for me, fate was on my side and who ever marked my exam must have seen the

merits of my argument. Idid not fail the exam; Ireceived ahigh mark. Icarry with me a

memory of walking quite haughtily up to my teacher and telling her that she had been

wrong, rubbing my more than passing grade in her face. Whether this actually happened,

Iam not sure. Ihave found that the trick of memory can often recreate our actions with

greater bravado than they actually occurred. As Ireflect upon this event in my life, I

wish there was the possibility to discuss what had happened with my teacher. If this were

possible Iwould inquire whether she remembered saying those words to me, if indeed

she remembered me at all. Iwould like to ask if for her this was amoment of "failed

pedagogy," and if in the following years her encounter with me as astudent informed her

teaching.

In the Master of Teaching programme it was with great excitement and enthusiasm that I

was able to develop apedagogy that is founded on the belief that my students possess

both the experience and knowledge to make meaningful contributions to the evolution of

the classroom and the lessons that were enacted within its walls. In contrast to an

outcome-based approach, Iwas taught that the "art of teaching invites teachers to have

children participate in the construction of their identities in classrooms.... The art of

teaching recognizes that each student brings ahistory of relation to each classroom

moment and engages that history in the learning" (Grumet, 1993, p. 206-207).

Intriguingly enough, the word art seemed to emerge in avariety of contexts throughout
 33
my studies. The "art of teaching," as described by Grumet, as well as in discussions

surrounding teaching art, not just as an elective subject, but also as an approach to

education and the curriculum—more appropriately teaching through art/the arts. Maxine

Greene (2000) writes about the arts as away of inspiring a"social imagination" within

cross-cultural contexts as well as in the construction of identity through the development

of multiple literacies—"connecting the arts to discovering cultural diversity, to making

community, to becoming wide-awake in the world. For me as for many others, the arts

provide new perspectives on the lived world" (p. 4). As my understanding of apotential

inclusive and imaginative pedagogy began to unfold, the interconnected nature of the

arts, education, and lived experience began to e/merge. Suddenly that space in-between

the tip of my finger and moon seemed fraught with possibilities.

This notion of the in-between space has, over the last five years, become integral to the

way Iunderstand the world and the way Iinhabit it as ateacher, filmmaker, and woman.

At the centre of this is the study of hermeneutics, aphilosophical approach Iwas first

introduced to in the Master of Teaching programme. Hermeneutics engages one in a

search for understanding as a"methodological concept which has its origin in the process

of human life itself. Human understanding is a'category of life' in texts, artifacts,

gestures, voices, and so forth, and we understand them to the degree to which how we

can show how they emerge from 'lived experience" (Smith, 1999, p. 31). Rooting itself

in the search for understanding of experience, hermeneutics seeks ahistorical

consciousness, as described by Hans-Georg Gadamer who believed in afusion of

horizons between past, present, and future. "It is this process alone that enables atext to
 34
say something, to address us and tell us something that we don't already know.

Through interpretation atext comes to speak. But no text and no book speaks if it does

not speak the language that reaches the other" (Weinsheimer, 1985, P. 224).

Hermeneutics challenges the interpreter of atext to be aware of his or her own language

in the world. As well as addressing the prejudice that may influence an interpretation in

order to be able to discover atruth or to unfold an aletheia, which, as Gadamer would say

allows for an "experience of truth [that] comes when we take the time to dwell on the

matter at hand in conversation with another" (Dostal, 1994, p. 49). As aresult,

hermeneutics has found aplace in educational research and critical pedagogy, making

necessary the acknowledgement of the value of the experience of the research subject.

For Gadamer, experience was crucial, defined as that "which strikes us and becomes a

part of us" (Grondin, 2003, p. 20)—resulting in the inclusiveness of "lived experience" in

how we perceive the world.

The process of understanding both written and visual texts is one that requires openness

to interpretation. Engaging in hermeneutics requires an attunement to and with

experience, as the "practice of interpretation attempts to show what is at work in different

disciplines and, in the service of human generativity and good faith, is engaged in

mediation of meaning" (Smith, 1999, p. 28). To an educator, this offers an opening for

the creation of an in-between space of teaching and learning, athird space

acknowledging that "the pact of interpretation is never simply an act of communication

between the Iand the You" (Bhaba, 1994, p. 53). It is within this space that the interplay

between watching, listening, and speaking unfolds, allowing for the art of teaching to
 35
take place, honouring the idea that "good teaching at every level requires the

construction of anew language, alanguage in the middle, that bridges our many ways of

speaking about the world" (Grumet, 1993, p. 208). Hermeneutics, in honouring the in-

between spaces and through its dedication to understanding and interpretation, "works

from acommitment to generativity and rejuvenation" responding "to the question of how

can we go on in the midst of constraints and difficulties that constantly threaten to

foreclose on the future. The aim of interpretation, it could be said, is not just another

interpretation but human freedom" (Smith, 1999, p. 29). Within educational contexts,

this creates an openness and respect for the complex relationships that exist in the world

and the discourses that erupt as aresult, forging new ways to conceive of such dualities

as parent/child, student/teacher, educator/curriculum, and curriculum/world.

One of the greatest gifts that emerged out of my graduate studies was the recognition that

there can be afusion between my career in film and my passion for education. At the

centre of this is hermeneutics and the connections it draws between truth and art. Greene

(2000) tells us that:

Aesthetic experiences require conscious participation in awork, agoing out of

energy, an ability to notice what is there to be noticed in the play, the poem, the

quartet. Knowing 'about,' even in the most formal academic manner, is entirely

different from constituting an fictive world imaginatively and entering it

perceptively, affectively, and cognitively. (p. 125)

This notion of the aesthetic, which Gadamer linked to hermeneutics, provides aspace for

challenging previously held notions of what it means to have an aesthetic consciousness.

 36
Recognizing the transformative nature of art, Gadamer believed "What stands out in a

work of art is the truth of the world such as its metamorphosis into awork, which is for

us an experience of recognition in both its meanings: that of knowledge and that of

thanks. Art opens our eyes" (Grondin, 2003, P. 44). Hermeneutics also brings awareness

to the question of subjectivity in reference to the search for truth in art:

"Artistic creation is less aclear mirror of reality than the effusion of subjectivity, and

aesthetic experience seeks to recreate amemory or an expression rather than to make

sense of existence" (Grondin, 2003, p. 45). The idea of memory, what it is and how it

informs our understandings of the past, becomes increasingly significant as we examine

the lives and work of women artists, and the ways in which they have endeavoured to

speak their way into the world.

Memory, Imagination and Narrative: Opening Spaces of Possibility through

Autobiography

An autobiography is aseries of stories that spans your life. Each story is aslice of life—

ascene or memory that show something about who you are or what you have

experienced. Writing your life can be like amovie.. . . As awriter, the film is in your

mind's eye. You create aslice of life when you search for and record amemory that tells

something about your inner nature. Each slice of life you create is ascene. Later, you

can splice those slices together and create an autobiography. (Davis, 2003, p. 9)
 37
Thinking about what it means when Isay Iwant to explore the way in which women

"write their lives," Iam taken back to an evening about four years ago. It was abook

reading for Canadian author Anne Marie MacDonald's last book The Way the Crow Flies

(2003). As Iam afan of her writing Iwas excited to hear her read an excerpt from her

book, particularly as Iwas at the beginning stages of conceptualizing the 'work' of

narrative in my thesis. As MacDonald stood at the front of Knox United Church in

Calgary, she spoke openly about the complexity of locating herself in the world as a

woman. She spoke of astruggle to author-ize herself, noting that despite the acclaim she

has received as an author, she has had ahard time describing herself as such. As Isat in

the back of the church, her words resonated with me and in that moment amultitude of

questions that had been building inside of me suddenly began to take shape. Why do

women struggle to author-ize themselves in the world? Why do we not believe that our

stories are worth sharing? Why do we struggle to recognize and believe that others learn

and grow from what we have to tell, from our similar or divergent lived experience in the

world?

As Iembarked upon the journey of examining representations of female artist-teachers in

film, Iwas introduced to Doris McCarthy's autobiographies. This led me to discover the

growing importance of autobiographical accounts in contemporary women's studies.

Allowing for the intertwining of ideas such as agency, memory, identity, and the ways in

which women embody the world, autobiography can be understood as an act of narration

through which the creation of new, performative spaces exploring the multiple histories

of our world can be forged. The process of engaging in an autobiographical narrative has
 38
been identified as aperformative act as it "enacts the 'self' [and] has given rise to an

'I.' And that 'I' is neither unified nor stable—it is fragmented, provisional, multiple in

process" (Smith & Watson, 2002, p. 9). The idea of performativity has taken on

particular importance for me, connecting to both representations on film as well as on the

page. Beginning with the work of Judith Butler, who looked at "the 'materialization' of

identities within speech acts," Redman (2005) connects film, gender, and performance

through "the concept of suture—the means by which subjects are said to 'appear' in

language via unconscious identification... [which] was developed in film studies during

the 1970's" (p. 27). This notion of performance engages not only in the study of those

who "perform" on stage and screen but also in how the reader or viewer takes in that

performance, incorporating it into their own lives. As individuals and as groups, we are

always engaged in acts of interpretation and identification that call upon the imagination

for understanding. This has also been identified as atype of "body knowledge," as

Grumet (1988) informs us. She adds, "Maurice Merleau-Ponty called it knowledge of the

body—subject, reminding us that it through our bodies that we live in the world. He called

it knowledge in the hands and knowledge in the feet" (p. 3). What is an autobiographical

telling? How has this form of narrating one's life become so important to exploring

women's experience? In search of answers to these questions it becomes vital to

recognize the distinctive differences between writing about experiences and critically

reflecting upon them.

 39
Autobiography and Gender: Forging Spaces in Contemporary Women's Studies

In recent years, the study of autobiography has gained new relevance in the examining

and understanding of woman's lives, particularly the functions and roles women have

historically held and currently hold in the world. Claiming apositive space for

understanding experience, "autobiographical memory subverts official history[,] serving

to illuminate repressed history and opening dialogue" (Staskowski, 2004, p. xiii).

Autobiography, Staskowski argues, allows "women. . . to communicate.. . ahistorical

understanding of their personal experience" (p. 3). In recognition of the constantly

shifting nature of the world and the complexity of trying to locate oneself within it, Smith

and Watson (2002) have suggested that "autobiographical narration" is abit of:

A moving target, aset of shifting self-referential practices, [it] offers occasions

for negotiating the past, reflecting on identity, and critiquing cultural norms and

narratives. The life narrator selectively engages aspects of her lived experience

through modes of personal 'storytelling' - narratively, imagistically, in

performance. That is, situated in aspecific time and place, the autobiographical

subject is in dialogue with her own processes and archives of memory. (p. 9)

The study of life writing is an emerging field that has developed close ties with women's

studies. In her book Auto/biography in Canada: Critical Directions (2005), Julie Rak

states that "it is not an exaggeration to say that feminist autobiography criticism has had

the most impact on the study of auto/biography as afield" (p. 14). She adds that Western

androcentrism has served to negate women's life experiences from consideration:

 40
Early feminist scholarship sought to bring women's life writing into the

auto/biographical canon, and it developed what Icall aparadigm of failure to

account for why they thought so many women before the twentieth century

treated their experiences as non-representative, or apologize for their stories or

their lives. By the late 1980's, scholars were questioning this paradigm of failure

and were beginning to develop apoetics of women's autobiography that

principally saw women's auto/biographical writing as exempt from androcentric

assumptions about the development of self in relation to an "other" (p. 14).

The spaces between truth and fiction are often brought to the forefront when discussing

issues of women's stories. As Virginia Woolf stated in 1929 in A Room of One's Own,

"A woman must have money and aroom of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as

you will see, leaves the greater problem of the true nature of women and the true nature

of fiction unsolved" (p. 6). Women's absence as authors is arecurrent theme in Woolf's

text. During atrip to the British Museum she reflexively asked, "Have you any notion of

how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any

notion how many are written about men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps the most

discussed animal in the universe?" (p. 32). Accordingly, as in cinema, women's stories

have almost always been written by men, thus begging the question: How are women to

recognize and understand their experiences in the world and conceive them within a

framework that allows us to live imaginatively? Recent strides towards afemale

auto/biographical voice has allowed for an identification that "focus[es] on the personal

not only allow[ing] women to describe, in their own words, their experiences, but also

illuminates the contextual, subjective and relational processes from which our
 41
understanding of the world emerges" (Munro, 1998, P. 6). While agrowing space for

the representation of women's lives in Western culture has apparently emerged, the

complexity of how the past imprints itself on current discourses surrounding

representation and identity cannot be disregarded. "Writing women's lives is ... no easy

task. How can we write as women when the 'women' subject is aconstruction of

masculinist language, or, in other words, afiction (Munro, 1998, p. 5)?" In her study of

biographical portrayals of Emily Carr, Stephanie Kirkwood Walker (1996) addresses the

complexity of "writing" an artist's life:

Instead of patterning my progress according to the occasions and concerns of

Emily Carr, even of her advocates or detractors, Ihave drawn this particular life

into the arena of life writing. Thus Iwrite of what we infer from encounters with

the genre and the alterations in the genre's meaning as beliefs, philosophies and

creative impulses change. As much as my concern is with how Emily Carr wrote

herself, it is also with the pivotal place held by accounts of the lives of women

artists and the manner in which asingle life—like apebble dropped in astill

pond—can affect any number of concerns on its periphery. (p. 4)

This recognition of the interconnected nature of the lives of Emily Carr, Doris McCarthy,

and their contemporaries has helped me to defy acommonly held assumption that there

were no women artists of note before acertain historical juncture. Accordingly, through

examining the film and autobiographical texts that narrate their experience, anew light

has been cast on the limited exposure we have had to the works they created and the lives

they lived. Such absences speak loudly of asystematic ordering of their worlds, rather

than any meritorious judgment of artistic 'quality' or 'excellence.'

 42

Unpacking Autobiography. Narrative Styles of Life Writing

Current understandings surrounding the act of writing about one's life can be identified

as engaging in the narrative telling of the experiences of certain people or personalities

who are considered to have lived" 'great' public lives." Described as a"self-

representational act," the commonly held perception of writing an autobiography is that it

is predominantly representative of great men whose lives "inscribe themselves textually,

visually and performatively" (Smith and Watson, 2002, p. 8). The implications of this

limited vantage point excludes narrative vehicles that might offer possibilities for women

and other marginalized groups interested in claiming and naming their experience,

whether it be termed: life writing, life narrative, memoir, biography, or auto/biography.

However, to the uncritical eye, little distinction exists between these various theoretical

permutations. In their, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives

(2001), Smith and Watson take up the complexity of these terms, aiming to make clear

distinctions, specifically between life writing, life narrative, and autobiography. They

state "we understand life writing as ageneral term for writing of diverse kinds that takes a

life as its subject," including biographical accounts, novels, and historical representations.

"We understand life narrative as asomewhat narrower term that includes many kinds of

self-referential writing," inclusive of memoirs. They identify autobiography as "the

definitive achievement of amode of life narrative, 'autobiography' celebrates the

autonomous individual and the universalizing life story" (p. 5). Later, in Interfaces:
 43
Women/Autobiography/Image/Performance (2002), they make afurther distinction

between biography and autobiography noting:

Although life narrative and biography are both modes of narrating lives, they are

not interchangeable.... In biography, scholars of other people's lives document

and interpret those lives from apoint of view external to the subject. In life

narrative people write about their own lives and do so simultaneously from

externalized and internal points of view. . . . The life narrator confronts not one

life, but two. One is the self that others see—the social, historical person with

achievements, personal appearance, social relationships. These are the 'real'

attributes of aperson living in the world. But there is also the self experienced

only by that person, the self felt from the inside that the writer can never get

'outside of.' (p. 5)

Rak (2005) contests this though, calling into question the "privileging of autobiography

over biography." She notes that the word autobiography "literally means 'self-life-

writing' illustrating how this has evolved through avariety of disciplines to create the

current auto/biography field, "which in the use of the slash highlights the instability of

autobiography as agenre, and expresses acontinuum rather than an area of absolute

difference between biography and autobiography" (p. 16). The practice of looking back

and bringing the past into the present allows auto/biography to exist as asite of new

understandings and possibility. Adopting the stance that the notion of experience must be

taken up as being discursive and historically located, life writing opens up spaces to be

"self-reflexive about what we understand as 'our experience" (Smith and Watson, 2001,

p. 26), acknowledging that it "is at once always an interpretation and is in need of

 44
interpretation" (Scott, 1992, p. 37). In the nature of hermeneutic inquiry, which calls

for both openness to experience and arecognition that the past, present, and future are

intertwined, it is this term of auto/biography that Iadopt when examining the life

narratives of Doris McCarthy.

 45
The Artist on Film: Teaching Narratives and Gender as Portrayed Through the
Canadian Lens

As Ireflect upon my involvement with the film industry over the last 13 years it does not

surprise me that the majority of films that Ihave worked on have not been Canadian

productions. Rather Canada, from the late 1990's through to the present, has become a

haven for what is referred to in Hollywood as "runaway productions." Due to the once

low Canadian dollar and the development of innovative provincial tax credit programs,

film crews in Canada have grown in numbers and experience over the last 15 years,

creating what is considered, in many provinces, to be alucrative and viable source of

revenue, based on aservice industry.

My list of film credits it consists mainly of American television movies and more

recently American feature films. My Canadian credits consist of television series,

including North of Sixty (1992-1998) and Pit Pony (1999), two quintessentially Canadian

CBC shows, and more recently the series Falcon Beach (2006-2007), which, although

created and produced by Canadians, was partially funded by ABC Family, an American

cable network owned by the Disney corporation. As aresult, while filming ashow set in

asmall beach town in Manitoba, albeit afictitious one, we had to make sure that if we

shot ascene showing money we did it twice, once with Canadian and once with

American bills. Similarly, when acity was referred to in the dialogue, it was necessary to

film aCanadian version mentioning Winnipeg or Toronto and an American version

referring to Boston or New York. Our all-Canadian cast was consistently harassed (by
 46
me, the script supervisor) to speak with ageneric American accent. This was required

to appease American network executives worried that their audience might notice that an

"out," "about," or "mom" may have adecidedly "un-American" twang. Jointly funded by

Telefilm Canada and the Canadian television network Global, Falcon Beach represented

the interrupted links created through acomplex system of co-production with which

Canadian filmmakers must engage to get their stories produced. Recently, while working

on another film production, Iwas speaking with afellow crewmember about my work on

Falcon Beach; she expressed her surprise that it had been filmed in Winnipeg.

Interestingly enough, her astonishment was aresult of having watched the show briefly

and believing that it looked unlike atraditional "Canadian TV series." Sadly, it was with

some satisfaction that we spoke of the show as having broken down the conventional

portrayal of Canada and Canadians in film, having achieved amore conventional

"American" quality of production.

The evolution of "Hollywood North," aterm for American film production across

Canada, has been examined in amore detailed manner by Michael Spencer in Hollywood

North: Creating the Canadian Motion Picture Industry (2003). It opens with the

statement:

Hollywood North—the phrase echoes through the countless newspaper stories and

magazine articles written over the years about the Canadian film industry. It's not

alocation, but aconcept: that the success, glamour, and all-American dream of

the motion picture industry can be recreated in Canada. (p. 1)

 47
Spencer's book is amemoir of his own experience as afilmmaker in Canada and

speaks to the cultural bureaucracy entrenched in the film community in Canada.

However, as the Canadian dollar rises and the individual American states adopt tax

incentive packages created to lure Hollywood production to film in their location, this

dream of Hollywood North becomes increasingly more fragile and the question of what

the Canadian industry will look like without the influx on American service productions

hangs heavily in the air. Contemplating this has led me to confront the difficulty of

locating what is implied by the identification of afilm as Canadian, leading to acritical

unravelling of the cultural policies that led to the creation of our national cinema.

Locating Canada on Film: Production Policies and Dominant Narratives Represented by

the NFB

The distinctive look of movies and television shows produced in Canada is exemplified

by the immense volume of work produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).

Through its influence, Canadian filmmakers are seemingly engaged in what Zoë Druick

(1998) describes as aprocess of "documenting, in astyle reminiscent to varying degrees

of ethnography, sociology, and political science, the everyday life of 'ordinary'

Canadians from all parts of the country" (p. 125). A particular style has been adopted by

contemporary Canadian film and television productions, often depicting what life might

have been like for pioneer Canadians. This is demonstrated in the two of the very

different television series that Iworked on. Pit Pony, which explored the challenges of

working in the coal mines of early 1900's Nova Scotia, and North of Sixty, the story of an
 48
aboriginal community that addressed the complexities of living as an "Other" in the

present day. Neither of these productions were funded or produced by the NFB, nor

were any of the others Ihave worked on over the past 10 years. However, it is through

exploring the past of this cultural agency, whose original mandate was to "help

Canadians in all parts of Canada to understand the ways of living and problems of

Canadians in other parts" (Druick, 2007, p. 22), that we can locate the foundations of

what has emerged as aCanadian filmmaking style.

The NFB was formed as aresult of the National Film Act of 1939. The position of Film

Commissioner was offered to John Grierson, adocumentary filmmaker from Great

Britain who had been invited by the Canadian government to "study the state of Canadian

film production and make recommendations that would revive it" (Gittings, 2002, p. 79).

At the helm of the NFB, Grierson placed the emphasis of Canadian film production on

the documentary, believing that the documentary film was the "creative treatment of

actuality" (Gittings, 2002, p. 79). Not in favour of the feature film format, Grierson

referred to it as "a low, escapist cultural form" which, rather than engaging it's viewers in

an educative viewing experience, catered to "moods of relaxation." In contrast to this,

Grierson imagined a"more erudite, formally instructional Canadian national cinema"

whose objective was to create acultural institution that would enable Canadians to

present themselves to the world (Gittings, 2002, p. 79). Contending that aneed existed in

Canada to create our own style of emotional presentation, under Grierson the NFB

adopted amandate to create imaginative and educational spaces through film, intended to

draw understanding between its diverse and widespread populace.

 49

Founded at the beginning of World War II, production at the NFB was quickly drawn

into the world of propaganda filmmaking, employing social reconstructionist discourses.

Believing in the power of the arts to address questions regarding what it means to live in

ademocratic and "good" society, the NFB was positioned to produce works that would

fall under the auspices of "capital C culture," that had a"significant role to play in the

reorganization of the home front and the world, both in apractical way and in a

philosophical contemplation" (Panayotidis, 2006, p. 150). As aresult, as the NFB

evolved and grew, so did its impact on the development of autilitarian cinematic style

committed to social realism and concepts of nationhood.

In recent years anumber of studies have been conducted examining the history of the

NFB through postmodernist frameworks, which seek to "unveil the shifting ways in

which Canadian cultures make sense of, and locate themselves in an imagined Canadian

community" (Gittings, 2002, p. 1). In her most recent book, Projecting Canada:

Government Policy and Documentary Film at the National Film Board (2007), Zoë

Druick makes the argument that, "Film Board films are statistical, in that they present

visual narratives of probable scenarios and outcomes in relation to social policy

objectives" (p. 7). Adopting the "narrative strategy" of being the "teller of statistical

tales," the topics of early NFB films included such things as mental and social hygiene,

labour management, national security, and education (Druick, 2007, p. 26). Druick is not

alone in her work to locate the impact of the intentionally educative mandate set forth by

the NFB. Malek Khouri's Working on Screen: Representations of the Working Class in
 50
Canadian Cinema (2006) addresses the history of labour in Canadian film. Carmen

Robertson, in Reel Artists: National Film Board of Canada Portrayals of Contemporary

Aboriginal and Inuit Artists and Their Art (2005), also takes up the teaching agenda

apparent in NFB films. Likewise, Brian Low's NFB Kids. Portrayals of Children by the

National Film Board of Canada 1939-1989 (2002) begins with an examination of the

mandate of the NFB and the cinematic representations of children which played avital

role in the "cinematic readjustment of Canada" (p. 65). Low adds: "As abody of films,

the postwar portrayals of children constitute apanoramic record - an unfolding field of

visions - of the changing physical, intellectual, and social realities of the peoples of

Canada" (p. 66). These scholarly works are significant as they identify the social

practices and historicizing of Canada by the NFB as being less concerned with the

production of an aesthetic vision, than seeking to guide Canadians' perceptions of self

and nation in particular ways, predominantly through the depiction of "everyday life" in

Canada.

Feminist Film Practices at the NFB

With the 1970's and the introduction of feminist film theory, it became increasingly

difficult for female voices to be excluded from the landscape of Canadian film

production. Film was not the only site of cultural production that was being transformed:

The starting point for much feminist cultural politics after 1968 was the

invisibility of women. Women's lives and experience were absent from most

history writing, sociological studies, and the literary and artistic canons. Women
 51
artists rarely featured in exhibitions whether historical or contemporary;

women writers and critics were marginalized. (Jordan & Weedon, 1995, p.186)

In 1974, the "universalizing pan-Canadianism of earlier NFB films was extended to the

funding of images of gender difference [with] the founding of Studio D, the first publicly

funded women's production unit in the world" (Gittings, 2002, p. 90). The mandate of

Studio D was concerned not only with how women were represented on screen, but also

with ensuring that they developed avoice behind the camera. Studio D strove to bring

"the perspective of women to all social issues through the medium of film, promoting

personal, social and political awareness," (Anderson, 1999, p. 47), providing an

opportunity for afemale perspective to contribute to the imagined community of the

Canadian nation. In 1997, after Studio D had been disbanded, adocumentary entitled

Kathleen Shannon: Film, Feminism, and Other Dreams (1997), directed by Gerry

Rogers, was released by the NFB. In the film Shannon, the founder and the executive

producer in charge of Studio D, states:

Things that relate to our own lives fascinate us, that had always been true for men,

so yeah, they hadn't done much for women because they weren't interested or

didn't know. But to see things related to our own lives is so important, it gives a

validity to our experience. Our experience is real too, which up to that point it felt

like being the Women's Auxiliary to the human race if you looked at Film Board

films... Even if you look in the equivalent of an encyclopedia there can be

tremendous bias, in terms of whose put the information in, what is considered

important, what is considered "the truth." There is no acknowledgement that

there may be many truths from different perspectives.

 52
Over the 22 years of its existence Studio D produced over 125 movies. It has been

concluded that "Studio D's attempts to give greater voice to marginalized groups and to

produce more varied images of women were largely token effort's," as they were not

viewed as having led to any "substantive structural change or to power sharing"

(Anderson, 1999, p. 54). Following it's demise in 1996, the NFB tried to continue to

support women filmmakers through inclusion in the Reel Diversity program, identified as

"the latest strategy for attracting 'marginal' citizens to make films about their

experiences, continuing to reinscribe Canadian "others" on film" (Druick, 2007, p. 175).

Reflecting upon the era of Studio D, scholars now recognize that its productions catered

to a"middle-class feminist ideology" (Melnyk, 2004, p. 168). However, that does not

deny that Studio D created aspace for adiscursive interchange of ideas and for women to

express their own experiences in the world.

In its 2002-2006 Strategic Plan, the National Film Board of Canada's mission statement

was extended to include the directive "to produce and distribute distinctive, culturally

diverse, challenging and relevant audiovisual works that provide Canada and the world

with aunique Canadian perspective" (National Film Board of Canada [NFB], Mission

section, para. 1). The word that stands out in this statement is "relevant," prompting me

to question who dictates what and whose stories are "relevant" enough to be translated on

film. Reflecting on the vast array of films produced by the NFB, it is clear that it has

sought to forge and explain group identities on film, "like Indians and Inuit, labourers,

the poor and unemployed, women and immigrants" (Druick, 1998, p. 125). In the

process, the NFB has influenced contemporary Canadian filmmakers and audiences,
 53
acknowledging that "film acts, both parliamentary and performative" engaging

Canadian filmmakers and audience "in adialogue, in astruggle over what culture - in all

its senses - could be or should be" (Druick, 2007, 184). It is not my intention to retell the

chronology of the NFB in this thesis, as aplethora of material already exists detailing its

history, including One Hundred Years of Cinema (2004) by George Melnyk, which offers

acomprehensive history of film in Canada, both inclusive and exclusive to the NFB.

However, it is this notion of relevance that echoes throughout this text. Recognizing the

hegemonic discourses of empire, colonization, and power in which the discursive

narratives told by the NFB are engaged, that are of significance as Iproceed to look at the

films discussed in the following pages.

Filmic Representations of the Male Artist in Canada

The first two films Twill look at, Lismer (195 1) and Canadian Landscape with A.Y.

Jackson (1941), were both produced in the early days of the NFB. My initial discovery

of these films happened quite by chance. In preparing to view the films on the Beaver

Hall Hill Group and Doris McCarthy, Iperformed asearch on the NFB website and in the

University of Calgary library catalogue for films on artists in Canada. At first, I

dismissed these two films as not being relevant to my study, as they focus on male artists.

However, upon further consideration Irealized that by watching these films and

examining the lives and work of these men, Iwould be better able to locate the

experience of the women who were their contemporaries. What unfolded on the screen

were depictions of the "quintessential Canadian identity," as well as representations of

 54
how the "male artist" was constituted versus the "female artist" on film. Through the

narration of Stephen Dale, who did the voiceover for anumber of films for the NFB in

the 1940's, it is stated at the beginning of Canadian Landscape with A.Y. Jackson,

"Though man has brought the wilderness under his hand, the frontier is never far away."

With these initial comments about the relationship of the male artist to the land, Ibegan

to situate my understandings of the larger artistic community in which the female artist

lived and worked in pre and post-World War If Canada.

In Canadian Landscape with A. Y. Jackson, the portrayal of Jackson, amember of the

Group of Seven, positions art in Canada within the framework of acountry with strong

ties to the land, constructing avision of Canada as vast and unyielding. With respect to

the work of the Group and their homage to the grandeur of the Canadian landscape, the

film's narrator notes: "Like all artists, these men owed much to tradition but they spoke

with anew voice, avoice of Canada." Produced in 1941, amere two years after the

creation of the National Film Board of Canada, Canadian Landscape is aconfirmation

that "art, social policy, education and moral convictions are never separate but bound up

inextricably in broader workings of the state" (Panayotidis, 2002, p. 2). Making the

claim that "artists look at Canada through Canadian eyes," Canadian Landscape

emphasizes the construction of afixed Canadian national identity within aplace of

rugged cliffs and grand landscapes. This portrayal of Jackson, in which the artist is

crafted as aheroic figure, argues that "the artist must be able to wield apaddle as well as

the brush" as he is accompanied by asweeping soundtrack, indicating possible peril

while he solely traverses the wilderness alone, in search of ascene to commit to the
 55
canvas. The definition of what is "Canadian" is manifest in this short film. The

influence of artists like Jackson in creating asense of nation building, abreaking free

from the old traditions to chart new paths, is reinforced through his landscape paintings in

which he "has produced his own essence of Canada, vast, rhythmic, vigourous." The

Group of Seven resonates with many Canadians today. Although many people are unable

to name the individual artists by name, their influence is deeply embedded in the

Canadian psyche, representing the rugged landscape to the forefront of our aesthetic

understanding of what it means to be Canadian. Once exhibited, the artistic works

produced by the Group quickly became nationally and internationally recognized as the

"best the country had produced." Displayed and disseminated by the National Gallery of

Canada and its education programme - the Groups work was promoted as away to

"provide an aesthetic sustenance to nourish the nation, providing the requisite 'sense of

beauty' and the 'intellectual and moral' impetus that would create agreat society"

(Zemans, 1995, p. 27). Reproductions travelled as far as Western Australia in 1935,

resulting in acomment from one local teacher that "through these works which had been

framed and shown throughout his school, students had come to truly understand the

Canadian experience" (Zemans, 1995, p. 22).

The second film Idiscovered that day in the library was Lismer (1951), which explored

the work of another pivotal member of the Group of Seven and art educator, Arthur

Lismer. For Lismer:

Art... [was] an integrating force for good, with acommon language that could

unite people of all races and creeds. The process of making art offered
 56
opportunities for gathering individuals into cohesive groups through the sharing

of ideas and skills and working towards common goals. In this way the individual

would be enlarged and society enriched. (Grigor, 2002, p. 345)

Placing particular emphasis on his ongoing commitment to art education, Lismer portrays

the artist/educator at work. Speaking to Lismer's passion for his students, the narrator

states: "Through them [his] influence has contributed to the gradual change of formal

education. Whatever the project... Lismer has emphasized the development of

personality and ideas rather than technical skill, understanding rather than factual

knowledge, experience rather than imitation." Lismer is portrayed as agrandfatherly

figure, patiently supervising and encouraging both precocious young children and adult

art students (albeit, in both cases, all female) to explore the world through abrush and

canvas at school. The film also takes acursory glance at his work as an artist, which like

his contemporaries, focused on the Canadian landscape serving as "a background of epic

grandeur." Both Canadian Landscape with A. Y. Jackson and Lismer serve as strong

examples of the type of documentaries that were produced by the NFB in its early years.

In Lismer, we watch the artist and educator at work, as he sits with ayoung child who is

struggling to paint. With great ease and encouraging words he illustrates how to paint a

bird. McLeish (1955) notes, "Lismer's faith that if one could only influence the early

education of children, one could make an important contribution to the country" (p. 119).

It must be remembered that the process of filmmaking is amindful act. Portraying a

story on film requires as much direction as writing anovel or short story. Once

production begins, even the spontaneous moments become mired in complexity as

 57
cameras, lights, and members of the crew surround the players. Regardless of the scale

of the production, these are all ingredients required to make amovie, allowing for a

constructed truth to be set forth, one that serves the agenda of the filmmaker and

requiring the cooperation of the subject. It must be flexible in its desired outcome. The

end result then becomes amerger of ideas and events. It is not by chance that A.Y.

Jackson was found paddling through the vast Canadian wilderness, or that, in Lismer, a

woman was "caught" on camera making the comment, "Art is so educational, isn't it? It

really makes you see things doesn't it?" Druick (2007) mentions, "In watching

documentaries, the viewer is formally suspended between having access to reality and

having an awareness of the filmmaker's enframing, as well as other limitations and

constraints placed on the interpretation being shown" (p. 12). In recognizing that these

were moments that were acted for the camera, as well as locating when, where, and by

whom these films were amade, anew critical awareness can be brought to the viewing of

these films. Lismer and Canadian Landscape with A. Y. Jackson were produced in the

pioneering stages of anational cultural institution, long before the consideration of a

feminist or social realist cinema evolved, leading to the production of films more

inclusive of women's voices.

The Female Artist on Film: The Beaver Hall Hill Group and Doris McCarthy

In contrast to the films about the male artists, By Woman's Hand (1994), focusing on the

relationships between agroup of female artists who were contemporaries of the Group of

Seven, and The Other Side of the Picture (1998), raise the complex question: "Where are
 58
all the women artists?" Both of the Lismer and Jackson films were made with the

cooperation and participation of the artists themselves, allowing for their experiences to

be reflected upon and portrayed from their vantage point. In contrast, the women

portrayed in By Woman's Hand were deceased by the time of the film's production in

1994. Examining the experiences of the female members of agroup of artists known as

the Beaver Hall Hill Group—"most remarkable for agroup of Montreal-born women

who dominated its membership during the twenties" (Reid, 1973, p. 187) - the voices of

the artists portrayed are never heard directly in this film. Rather, the director, Pepita

Ferrara, frames their life experiences in amanner that makes it impossible to ignore the

choices they were confronted with in life, so that they could pursue their art.

Accordingly, we are only able to see their lives and experiences through the eyes of the

filmmaker, with contributions from historical documents and friends and family who are

still living, resulting in the construction of aparticular interpretive account of their lives.

By Woman's Hand (1994) opens with adramatic re-enactment of the life of Prudence

Heward, informing the audience that while "she [once] stood at the centre of Canadian

art, after death Prudence Heward's work simply vanished into obscurity. In aworld of

male masterpieces, woman's art tends to disappear." Much of By Woman's Hand focuses

on Heward and her close relationships with her fellow artists, Anne Savage and Sarah

Robertson. In stark contrast to Canadian Landscape, where the identity of the artist is

defined as that of asolitary man of the land, able-bodied and capable of living in the

wilderness on his own, the woman as artist is depicted in avery different manner. The

viewer is led through more dramatic re-enactments of Prudence Heward, pensive and
 59
thoughtful in her studio and images of women (presumably Heward and Savage)

walking through the snowy parks of Montreal. While the man as artist was portrayed as

an isolated and independent entity, the woman as artist is shown as apart of acommunity

of fellow artists, both male and female, defined by her strong emotional ties to family and

home. The result are constructed, dichotomous representations of the rural male at home

in the wilderness, in contrast to the urban, sheltered female bounded by her situational

context. Looking at the artists represented in By Woman's Hand, it becomes evident that

while not all of their families struggled for financial stability, the options available to

women were very limited. While they were afforded the patience to pursue their art up to

apoint, at acertain age the expectation of marriage became evident, with few options of

living lives outside of the societal expectations of the day. Interestingly, none of the

women discussed in By Woman's Hand ever married, leading them to live lives on the

fringes, caring for aging parents or teaching to support themselves, while they pursued

their passion for painting.

The motto of the Beaver Hall Hill Group, borrowed from Shakespeare's Hamlet

(1602/1963), was "this above all, to thine own self be true" (p. 52). As these female

artists are depicted through the lens of By Woman's Hand the motto appears to be a

pledge that they all followed ferociously. The choice to pursue the life of an artist would

not have been an easy one for women of their day. The complexity of this struggle is

shown most clearly when looking at the relationship between Anne Savage and A.Y.

Jackson. Introduced to the "character" of Anne Savage in By Woman's Hand, we are told

that she shared alove for landscape painting with members of the Group of Seven. As
 60
the leader of the Beaver Hall Hill Group, A.Y. Jackson developed aclose friendship

with all of the female members. However, By Woman's Hand draws particular attention

to the relationship between him and Savage. Although both are enamoured with the

Canadian landscape, the film states, "I think up close is more comfortable for awoman

than great sweeps.... While A.Y. Jackson and the Group of Seven are out hiking and

paddling through uncharted Northern wilderness, Anne Savage sets out to explore the

countryside near her country home." In contrast, to the isolated and rugged landscape

portrayed in the work being put out by the Group of Seven, "The landscape that inspires

Anne and her friends, is one where the human hand can be seen and felt." As ayoung

woman, Anne Savage's career appeared rich with possibility. "After attending the

Minneapolis School of Design, Anne dreamed of heading to New York to continue her

studies in art, however in 1922 her father dies. As the last unmarried daughter, Anne

does what is expected of her. Anne stays home to care for her aging mother, she takes a

teaching job, and spends every spare moment painting the landscape she loves." In the

film, Savage (or at least the narration) speaks passionately of her landscape painting,

suggesting that it was" at the root of everything Idid." We are later informed that at one

point A.Y. Jackson proposed to Savage, but she turned him down both out of obligation

to her mother as well as out of fear of having to give up her own life as an artist. The

internal landscapes she painted echoed the life she lived, immersed between the world of

nature she so loved and the society within which she was confined. This tale, of the

female artist forced to abandon or compromise her pursuit of an artistic life, seems to

resonate throughout popular understandings of the history of female artists. Nochlin

(1988) points to "institutional structures" and the "view of reality which they impose on
 61
the human beings who are part of them" (p. 3), as influencing the manner in which

women as artists envision themselves and are envisioned by the world.

As By Woman's Hand continues we are also introduced to Sarah Robertson, aclose

friend of Prudence Heward and Anne Savage. Robertson, we discover shared asimilar

fate to Anne Savage. Identified as Prudence Reward's best friend, the film states, "Life

for Sarah became aconstant struggle. With no money of her own she is trapped at home

by amother she can never leave. Art becomes her only escape, self-expression her

greatest freedom." As the portraits of these women are painted on film, we see the

struggles with which they were confronted, and ultimately how these were represented in

their work. As it draws to aclose, the film returns to the life of Prudence Heward noting,

"Like Sarah, Pm finds inspiration within the narrow social confines of awoman's world.

Windows become arecurring motif in her art." Heward's work is possibly the most

famous of the three women discussed in this film, best known for her portraits of women

in whose, "alienation and suffering, defiance and dignity. . . Pm explores the strength

and fragility of human life." Suffering from asthma, Reward was forced to give up

painting in 1946 and died five years later, essentially suffocating to death from her

asthma. Sarah Robertson died 21 months later of bone cancer and Anne Savage, who left

behind astrong contribution to both the world of Canadian art as well as to the world of

education, died in 1971. Much has been written about Anne Savage in recent years, most

likely because her pedagogical and personal papers were archived and are currently held

at Concordia University in Montreal. Less is known or has been written about Reward

and Robertson, although the former is still recognized as "the best" of the women of
 62
Beaver Hall, creating female portraits "each displaying amore intense union of colour

and form, reflecting personalities of vigourous individuality" (Reid, 1973, p. 188).

However, in the midst of searching for literature on these women, it cannot be overlooked

that they are overshadowed by the vast amount that exists on their male counterparts.

The Other Side of the Picture, produced in 1998, addresses the topic of women's history

as acounter-history that is still struggling for aplace in the world. It introduces its

audience to anumber of female artists and begs the questions, "Is it true that there are no

great woman artists or is it simply that we've been led to believe that they're really not

that great after all?" This film expands our view beyond the history of Canadian art,

acknowledging the lack of representation of female artists that pervades museums and art

galleries throughout the world. The Other Side of the Picture includes avisit to the

National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., and atrip to the

Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It also tracks the tale of asculptural exhibit

entitled The Dinner Party:

A massive ceremonial banquet in art, laid on atriangular table measuring 48 feet

on each side. Combining the glory of sacramental tradition with the intimate

detail of acarefully orchestrated social gathering, the artist represents 39 "guests

of honor" by individually symbolic, larger-than-life-size china-painted porcelain

plates rising from intricate textiles draped completely over the tabletop. Each

plate features an image based on the butterfly, symbolic of avaginal central core.

The runners name the 39 women and bear images drawn from each one's story.

(LewAllen Contemporary Gallery, 2007)

 63
The Dinner Party stands as an excellent example of the discursive history of women's

art and how its existence has been subverted and dismissed. It spent many years sitting in

boxes, waiting for aspace, large enough, and agallery, brave enough, to exhibit it. The

Other Side of the Picture offers avariety of perspectives and understandings on why,

indeed, women are so under-represented in the history of art. Through various interviews

and examples, the trials and tribulations confronted by female artists seeking recognition

of the voice and story that they possess, the work they have accomplished, and their lived

experience are presented. In the film, Dennis Reid, senior curator at the Art Gallery of

Ontario at the time, states, "Women have suffered from the fact that the dominant social

order is of course male-oriented, it has been always, so that the values and ideas that

seem most compelling, the most important, tend to be male and are to derive from male

experience." Reid's provocative statement reminds us that, "feminists are acutely

sensitive to the historical nature of knowledge and therefore mutable nature of both

knowledge and social organization {as] asource of empowerment" (Staskowski, 2004, p.

76). Again Iam led to question whose stories matter in our world and what narratives

have been incorporated into the discourses that have influenced and informed our society.

Iwonder what educative possibilities exist through film, as an alternative form of

communication, to imagine the world we live in and in cultivating adifferent future?

Central to this inquiry is the dilemma of living within the confines of a"Western

postcolonial society" as it "attempts to break free of the Western discourses based on

race, class, and gender" (Gazetas, 2000, p. 6). As aresult, film in this context opens up

avenues for accessing counter-histories, recognizing the societal challenges within which
 64
women artists have historically and culturally operated. In The Other Side of the

Picture, Reid informs us that "the more we delve into what the actual circumstances of

the production of woman artists was, the more we're going to understand, and the more

meaningful these works are going to become to the broader segment of the community."

Revisiting the National Museum for Women in the Arts, the film begins to open the

discussion regarding the power of the museum or art gallery as acultural institution that

informs and influences our understandings of the histories of art. The curator of the

museum, Susan Fisher Sterling, addresses the importance of education in the

development of future generations. She notes that "certainly one of the things that this

museum looks at is the opportunities that were available to women and the opportunities

that weren't available to women." This statement, which seems so simple and obvious in

its message, is one that must not be overlooked, for women to:

Establish their traditions—to know one's tradition is asource of strength. To

know that for centuries women have been grappling with the same issues which

concern women today legitimizes atrain of thought which social pressures have

all too often derailed. (Staskowski, 2004, p. 76)

Madeleine Grumet (1988) likens this idea of "tradition" to the process of "looking back

through our mothers." This familial relationship is embodied by the teacher/student

relationship, one which, Grumet suggests, is "more self-consciously intentional.

Teachers and students manipulate signs and symbols. The medium through which we

communicate is knowledge" (p. 107). Significantly, creating dialogue, knowledge, and

understanding among women from different generations, races, and life-worlds is vital to

our individual and collective whole.

 65

It was in The Other Side of the Picture that Iwas first introduced to Doris McCarthy.

Although occupying only asmall amount of screen time in this film, her presence and

voice are formidable. The film opens (and closes) with images of McCarthy painting the

landscape. Hers is the first voice heard, as she makes the provocative statement, "When I

was growing up Iheard and actually believed that there were no great women artists."

McCarthy, as both an artist and educator, is depicted in The Other Side of the Picture as

living in the in-between spaces, existing between the generations that came before and

after her. Citing Arthur Lismer as her primary influence, she recounts how "[he] was my

teacher and my inspiration and my friend, and Ithink probably he is responsible for the

decision Imade way back in my teens that Iwas going to be alandscape painter."

McCarthy, much like her contemporary Emily Carr, encountered great difficulty

achieving respect as an artist. Carr, we are told in The Other Side of the Picture:

Never had greatness thrust upon her. She achieved it at great personal cost. Sure,

people say we have lots of other artists, but many of those artists owe an

incredible debt to Emily Carr as she had to shelve aportion of her personality to

be able to devote herself to her art. She had to make aconscious decision whether

she was going to be an artist or whether she was going to be awife and mother.

And art won out.

Both Carr and McCarthy have left alasting influence on the Canadian art world. For

McCarthy, her influence will also be felt for generations to come through her work as an

artist-teacher at Central Technical School in Toronto where she taught for over 40 years.
 66
Later in The Other Side of the Picture, McCarthy' srelationship with Joyce Wieland

(1931-1998), the first female Canadian artist to have her own show at the National

Gallery of Canada within her lifetime springs to life on the screen. Doris McCarthy

describes Wieland, her former student at Central Technical School (Toronto), as "very

creative and adventurous." The warm relationship that existed between them is palpable

on the screen as the student and teacher sit down to discuss their experiences with one

another. The narrator of The Other Side of the Picture echoes Joyce Wieland's

contention that she "dislikes being called afeminist. She says she takes it for granted but

she's convinced that men and women create art that 'just comes out different." This

statement central to the early feminist movement of the 1970's, which Chadwick (1990)

refers to as the "belief in afemale nature or feminine essence, which could be revealed by

stripping away layers of patriarchal culture and conditioning" (p. 9). Wieland, who was

both amixed-media artist and filmmaker, recognized that:

Art is not afree autonomous activity.., but rather, that the total situation of art

making, both in terms of the development of the art maker and in the nature and

quality of the work of art itself, occur in asocial situation" (Nochlin, 1988, p. 6).

What becomes apparent through viewing The Other Side of the Picture is that there were

amultitude of female artists, both past and present, who have shared in the struggle to

have their work recognized. However, the experience of each woman is individual and

subjective, resulting in amultitude of "her" stories, which recognize and locate the

complexity of women's lives within the grand narratives of our society, offering a

creative and imaginative space to dwell.

 67
To historically and artistically locate Doris McCarthy within the context of Canadian

art, we have turned to aselection of other films about those who came before her, as well

as those who greatly influenced her work. Doris McCarthy: Heart of aPainter (1986), is

the only film to be discussed in this paper that was not produced by the National Film

Board of Canada. Focusing solely on the life and art of Doris McCarthy, it follows her

on apainting trip to Alberta as well as showing her evolution as an artist and teacher

through historical re-enactments. As an introduction to the life and work of Doris

McCarthy, this film serves to depicts her as having lived in the in-between spaces of the

male, rugged, Canadian landscape artist and the fragile, confined, female artists depicted

in other films. Heart of aPainter is representative of what Druick (2007) refers to as, "a

shift toward the autobiographical in documentary production" in the 1980's, that allowed

for the subjects/participants of afilm to make acontribution towards "a blurring of lines

between personal and historical" (p. 165). Travelling west at the opening of the film,

McCarthy ruminates on her role as an artist. As the movie progresses the choices that she

made in order to pursue her own path in life become more evident:

Irealized some years ago that no life can hold all of the riches that are offered, so

if Ididn't have the husband and the children and the grandchildren that my friends

had, what Ihave had is an incredible richness of friendship, opportunities for

moving around and travelling in my work. When Iwas teaching Ithought it was

possible that as soon as Iwas finished teaching Iwould stop painting because I

would be relieved from the pressure of having to paint in order to be agood

teacher. So one of the great joys for me was to discover, when Iwas finished

teaching, that I'm painting because Ilove to do it, in spite of the struggle, in spite
 68
of the discouragement and the difficulties and the sheer physical difficulty of

being an artist. It's the thing Ilove to do.

Existing as avisual text that stands as abiographical, as well as an autobiographical,

representation of her life and experience, Heart of aPainter helped me to recognize that,

"film images not only [give] spectators asubjective perceptual experience of viewing

'reality,' they also provide afilm experience that [gives] meaning and expression to ways

of seeing and interpreting cultural discourse" (Gazetas, 2000, p. 1). It is in this film that

the complex relationship between the identity of Doris McCarthy as artist and Doris

McCarthy as teacher becomes evident, constructing an image of awoman for whom art

and teaching were very much intertwined, sometimes happily co-existing and at other

times in great conflict.

In the opening frames of Doris McCarthy: Heart of aPainter (1986), we are introduced

to the elderly face and powerful voice of the woman whose life and experience informs

this thesis in rich ways. Beginning with amedium close-up, the filmmaker familiarizes

us with McCarthy through her own words: "What Iam trying to do is to see our country

with love, with appreciation, and to try to express that on canvas. Iuse the tools that

every artist uses, form, colours, texture, tone; Iam never satisfied, it is never good

enough." This theme of dissatisfaction with her own work extends beyond her art.

Through her extensive use of the medium of autobiography, McCarthy has continued to

"speak" her way in to the world well into her 90s, perhaps in the search of asense of

agency, or perhaps out of fear that she, like many before her, will fade into obscurity after

her death. Heart of aPainter follows McCarthy on her journey to Western Canada, to
 69
the Badlands, at apoint in her life when she was able to retire from teaching to pursue

life fully as an artist. It delves backwards though historical re-enactments to explore her

artistic youth under her mentor Arthur Lismer, her later life as an artist-teacher. The love

for landscape was not lost on Doris McCarthy, who "during the Great Depression of the

early 30's, [was] one of the fortunate few to win ateaching post in the Art Department of

Toronto Central Technical School, allowing her to continue to develop artistically while

working as ateacher." In the film, she also speaks to the financial struggles she

encountered as ayoung artist. She acknowledges that before this she had been

"scratching out aliving as afreelance artist," so with the teaching position at Central

Technical School anew chapter of her life was to begin.

Heart of aPainter begins its narrative at atime in McCarthy' slife when she had retired

from teaching, moving from the present backwards to inform us of her past. After 40

years of dedication to the teaching profession Doris McCarthy retired and "earned the

right to become afull time artist. Her goal was to paint Canada." As can be seen through

her paintings, McCarthy's vision of Canada was influenced by her connection to the land.

As the viewer journeys through the re-enactments of her past, and out to Alberta with the

contemporary McCarthy and the filmmakers, her passion for her art is clear, as is her

desire to be an independent woman. In Subject to Fiction: Women Teachers' Life History

Narratives and the Cultural Politics of Resistance (1998), Petra Munro claims that, "to

represent is to inscribe knowledge and what knowledge counts. Representation is a

curriculum act" (p. 3). As such McCarthy, in contributing to the representation of herself

in this film continues her legacy as an educator, bridging the gap between the
 70
representation of the male artist who conquered the wilderness and that of the fragile

female artist.
 71
Recovering Memory: The Life-Writing of Doris McCarthy

Just as Iwalk the coulees where Ilive, searching for animal tracks, beaten paths,

deer trails, old cairns, and holy rocks, trying to know and understand this place

and my place in it, so too am Idrawn to the landscape of memory. Just like my

memory, at first glance, the coulees do not seem particularly remarkable. They

appear as aseries of undulating hills that simply relieve the boring flatness of a

silent prairie. Yet with asecond look, points of color become visible: apear

cactus in yellow spring-bloom, rose hips fully ripened midst brittle autumn leaves

(Chambers, 2003, p. 103).

***

There seems to be something fitting about beginning achapter, whose purpose is to

examine the life writings of Doris McCarthy, with ametaphor likening the act of

remembering through landscape. For McCarthy, the practice of bringing the Canadian

tundra to life on her canvas was an act of love, an act of remembering, and an essential

part of her identity as an artist and teacher. In this chapter, Iunpack the life-writing of

Doris McCarthy to gain deeper insight into her experience and understandings of self. I

am particularly interested in discerning how her work as an artist informed her life as a

teacher and as awoman, and equally, how her identity as awoman/artist/teacher was

shaped by her art and her life, within the context of anation searching for an identity of

its own.
 72
My introduction to autobiographical writing occurred during my first degree in asenior

level undergraduate English class exploring the lives and experiences of the "Other."

The course reading included Maria Campbell's Halfbreed (1973); Maxine Hong

Kingston's The Woman Warrior: Memories of aGirlhood Among Ghosts (1976);

Michelle Cliff's The Land of Look Behind (1985); and Michael Ondaatje's Running in the

Family (1982). In each case the authors explored the complexity of living on the fringes

of Western society while struggling to maintain aconnection to their originating culture.

Unknown to me at the time, this was my first foray into the difficulty of living in an in-

between space. Sitting here now, more than 10 years since taking that course, I

understand that the impact of the readings that Itook up in that class as they reverberate

within the pages that Iwrite today. Such understandings, propelled me down the road of

exploring the intersections of culture, identity, representation, and memory. As Michael

Ondaatje beautifully writes in his latest novel Divisadero (2007), "with memory, with the

reflection of an echo, agate opens both ways. We can circle time. A paragraph or an

episode from another era will haunt us in the night, as the words of astranger can" (p.

268). Thus the challenge becomes to maneuver oneself within this "circle of time," to

seek meaning and truth. This also connects to what is referred to as "the hermeneutic

circle" which reflects the "three themes in hermeneutic inquiry that have always been

present: namely the inherent creativity of interpretation, the pivotal role of language in

human understanding, and the interplay of part and whole in the process of

interpretation" (Smith, 1999, p. 104). The hermeneutic circle engages the reader in an

exchange of ideas with the text—according to Gadamer "the [hermeneutic] circle comes

to describe the constant process of revision in the anticipations of understanding, in the

 73
light of agreater knowledge of the parts and in the name of agreater coherence of

interpretation" (Grondin, 2003, p. 81). Smith reminds us that, "all writing is in asense

autobiographical" (Smith, 1999, p. 129). As such, McCarthy's life narratives—whether

textual or filmic—are significant to astudy of women artists in Canada, prompting the

critical question of "Where are all the great woman artists?" and exploring the discursive

nature of historical narratives that have long excluded voices such as hers from

recognition.

Often when attempting to conjure aspecific time and place, we close our eyes and create

amental picture of past events. Memory is tied into the senses, it is through sight, sound,

touch and smell that we are often reminded of both the beautiful and the horrific

moments of life. However, this is memory on an individual level. It is the larger

question of how an individual memory is imprinted on aculture, gender, or nation with

which Iam concerned; how the experiences of the individual can be shared so that

transformation within alarger context can be enacted. In Memory, History, Forgetting

(2004), Paul Ricouer forms ahypothesis of the "threefold attribution of memory: to

oneself, to one's close relations, and to others" (p. 132). Examining the complex

relationship between personal (the tradition of inwardness) and collective memory (the

external gaze), Ricouer offers the following suggestion:

Does there not exist an intermediate level of reference between the poles of

individual and collective memory, where concrete exchanges operate between the

living memory of individual persons and the public memory of the communities

to which we belong? (p. 131).

 74
Viewing the films discussed in Chapter 3, it appears that the lives and identities of

male and female artists in Canada, from 1920 to the present, were embodied and

experienced in very different ways. In her auto/biographies McCarthy constructs alife

narrative that situates her historically in along-lineage of female (and male) artists in

Canada. In some ways McCarthy is not unlike Anne Savage and Prudence Heward;

however, she seems to stand apart from them in that the artistic life she speaks of

resembles more closely that of the men who both preceded her and directly contributed to

her formation as an artist. As Iexamine how she describes herself, her art, and her

teaching Iam reminded that all of McCarthy's auto/biographies were published after she

had contributed to the two films, The Other Side of the Picture (1998) and Doris

McCarthy: Heart of aPainter (1986). Upon reflection, Iwas struck with the possibility

that McCarthy, in agreeing to participate in the making of the films, had been confronted

with the complex and perhaps troubling question of "where are all the women artists?"

Offering the possibility that the struggles confronted by her peers and predecessors

influenced the manner in which she framed her personal experience through her life

writing. As Iworked to unpack both the filmic and written texts Idiscovered that they

have become intertwined for me, much as they may have been for McCarthy.

In the film Heart of aPainter (1986), while discussing the inspiration for the title of her

first auto/biography, A Fool in Paradise (1990), we see ayoung McCarthy building her

own home, which her mother labeled as her "Fool's Paradise." Stating, "I was my own

contractor," McCarthy represents herself in the image of astrong, independent, and

passionate woman able to control her own destiny. It is hard to know which preceded the
 75
other, her love for nature feeding into her desire to paint or the practice of capturing

the landscape in her painting leading her to explore the land she inhabited. As Iread

McCarthy's auto/biographies, it occurred to me that she may have been unaware of the

discursive spaces she was creating through telling her story. In sharing her life

narratives, McCarthy invites others to interpret not only the events as she describes them

but also her interpretation of them. Having watched the films discussed in chapter 3

before reading the texts, Ihad begun to build an awareness of the time and place from

which she was writing. In both films, her discussion surrounding her experiences as an

artist, as ateacher, and as awoman are provocative, implying the multitude of struggles

McCarthy faced in her life. She is aself-proclaimed optimist, and through her

participation in The Other Side of the Picture and Doris McCarthy: Heart of aPainter

McCarthy began the process of carefully crafting the identity she appears to have wanted

to leave behind and which she continues to define as she proceeded to reflect upon her

experiences through her auto/biographies. However, to critically deconstruct these texts

is to unpack the alternately competing and harmonious identities that McCarthy embodies

as an artist/teacher/woman.

"A Fool in Paradise" and "The Good Wine" McCarthy's First Auto/biographical
-

Accounts

Written in 1990 and 1991 respectively, A Fool in Paradise: An Artist's Early Life and

The Good Wine: An Artist Comes ofAge, represent McCarthy's life chronologically,

illustrating that "the autobiographical is aperformative site of self-referentiality where

the psychic formations of subjectivity and culturally coded identities intersect and
 76
'interface' one another" (Smith & Watson, 2003, p. 11). A Fool in Paradise covers

the first 40 years of her life and McCarthy (1990) opens it with the statement "This is the

story of my becoming" (p. i). In this thought-provoking text, McCarthy explores her

childhood and school years followed by her subsequent evolution into her roles as both

an artist and teacher. In The Good Wine (1991), McCarthy delves into the subsequent 40

years of her life, centrally discussing her teaching and life beyond the classroom. It is

through these texts, in combination with the visual texts discussed in chapter 3, that a

carefully constructed image of McCarthy begins to take shape, as does the obvious

importance for her to have alasting, and perhaps controllable, impact on how she is

remembered.

In A Fool in Paradise, McCarthy details her childhood. Born in 1910 in Calgary,

Alberta, Doris McCarthy is the daughter of George Arnold McCarthy, acivil engineer,

and Mary Jane Colson Moffat. "Blessed in being the girl after two boys" (McCarthy,

1990, p. 2), McCarthy's engagement with the natural world around her began at an early

age. In discussing her family home, McCarthy shows the complexity of remembering

events and the subjective nature of memory, giving abodily and sensual description of

looking back. She notes: "[Our] family lived in MacLean for the first three years of the

war, long enough to confuse my sequence of memories. To know right hand from left I

must stand again facing the kitchen window. My right is the one on the same side as the

backyard. North is the house where the Arnolds lived" (P. 8). In reading A Fool in

Paradise, Ifound that McCarthy' srespective relationships with her father and mother are

constructed in very particular ways. She writes about her mother's musical talent:
 77
She had won ascholarship to study opera in England but her parents wouldn't

or couldn't let her use it. A pity. Her voice was glorious, clear, true, and strong.

Besides the voice she had the temperament. She made astage wherever she

was. Ithink she looked back wistfully all her life at the opportunity she had

missed, and Iam sure that is one of the reasons she supported me in every effort

to become an artist. (McCarthy, 1990, P. 16)

In most instances throughout the text, Ifound McCarthy's tone towards her mother to be

critical with most of her childhood stories favouring her time with her father. While

McCarthy does not dwell on her relationship with her mother, she lovingly writes about

her father, noting: "Dad had conditioned me to feel that nature and the out-of-doors were

an important part of my heritage" (McCarthy. 1990, p. 49). It is this acknowledgement of

the limitations awoman's life, in this case those that affected her mother, that creates a

defining framework through which she introduces us to her childhood experiences. Iwas

left pondering what it was like for ayoung Doris McCarthy to imagine life as an artist,

believing that her own mother was not able to pursue her passion for the arts. Ialso

found myself wondering while women often come into the world "thinking back through

our mothers" why it is that it is through the experiences of our fathers that we are taught

to live in and imagine the world?

Engaging in her own hermeneutic exploration of her life story, "reading the beginning

through the end and the end through the beginning" (Grumet, 1988, p. 99), McCarthy

begins with what Grumet refers to as the practice of "thinking back through our mothers"

which "invites us to recollect, to re-collect the process of our own formation" (p. 191).
 78
As awoman in 2007, Ican speak to the differences between my life and the

opportunities Ihave been presented, which were not available to my mother during her

youth in the 1940's and 1950's. My knowledge of such lost opportunities, comes through

listening to my mother's stories, which are framed within her own experience, enforcing

the idea that "the world comes to us already as stories and that we cannot get out of these

stories (narratives) to check if they correspond to the real world/past, because these

'always already' narratives constitute 'reality" (Jenkins, 2003, p. 11). McCarthy, born

in 1910, and her mother, born in the late 19th century, would have been subject to even

more diverse challenges, as women. Isuspect their opportunities were even more limited

than that of my mother. Even today, the pressures on women to get married and have

children are immense. Most women Iknow, including myself, struggle with the intricacy

of conceiving how one may live afull-life.

The close relationship with her father, described in A Fool in Paradise (1990), echoes in

later accounts involving male influences in McCarthy' slife. It seems there were a

number of strong and successful men throughout her life, whom she identifies in her

auto/biographies as having had an effect on her, starting with Arthur Lismer. It is

interesting to observe the evolution of McCarthy's relationship with Arthur Lismer. By

exploring the complexities of his influence on her, questions arose for me with regard to

the evolution and creation of the notion of awoman's history. Through my work in

interpretive studies, Ihave come to realize that "everywhere where power exists, it is

being exercised. No one, strictly speaking, has an official right to power; and yet it is

always exerted in aparticular direction, with some people on one side and some on the
 79
other" (Foucault, 1977, P. 213). In 1926, McCarthy began taking Saturday morning art

classes at the Ontario College of Art where she discovered what was to become her own

passion for painting:

The main thing Ilearned [was] that Canadian art was changing, and that there

were painters pioneering anew style of landscape painting. . . . Ibecame so

convinced of the importance of this new direction in Canadian art that Ientered

the Malvern senior oratorical contest, planning to tell the school about it.

(McCarthy, 1990, p. 68)

It is here that she also first encountered Arthur Lismer and her early impressions of him

were not all that flattering:

Arthur Lismer was the tall, untidy, tweedy figure in charge of the course. His thin

front hair escaped from the balding spot it was supposed to cover and stuck strait

[sic] up when he became excited. He gave us ashort talk at the beginning of

every class, setting aproject for the day, teasing us with ironic jokes and irritating

me very much. Iwanted him to be serious and teach something. (McCarthy,

1990, p. 69)

However, in both her textual auto/biographies, and in Doris McCarthy: Heart of a

Painter, McCarthy spoke with great respect and admiration for Lismer, describing theirs

as arelationship that grew over time, ultimately, offering a

different dimension to their

teacher/student interaction. Quoting journal excerpts from her days as astudent she

states:

October 8, 1926: We are actually started. Iseem to be getting along famously so

far. Ilove my teachers. Mr. Lismer is just the same—perhaps alittle less odious
 80
in his jokes, but he hasn't lost his baffling attitude of being amused at the whole

world and at us in particular. ... Idon't seem to see any prospects of akindred

spirit.

October 23: Isat beside Mr. Lismer and suffered horribly from nerves at having

him help me to butter and potatoes. But it was quite thrilling watching him draw

Mr. [Emanuel] Hahn, who was right opposite me, on the tablecloth. It was so

jolly and informal. Mr. Lismer had us in fits with his jokes (e.g. celery—sellery).

He has aremarkable brain for seizing puns and can never resist them. But he

fascinates me. Ilove to watch and listen to him talk. His little eyes are so beady

and when he makes ajoke they peer this way and that and twinkle to see if we're

laughing. (McCarthy, 1990, p. 70 - 71)

From here the student/teacher relationship with Lismer blooms. Along side this

recognition of the influence Lismer had on McCarthy as an artist, is the relationship she

had with her father. Seemingly, while McCarthy lived with all of the societal restrictions

of being awoman, her art, her traditions and the way she lived her life in many ways can

be more likened to that of the men by whom she was influenced. This leads me to revisit

the notion that the search for awoman's history has often been mired along the way, as

we seek to "draw our life worlds out of obscurity so we may bring our experience to the

patriarchal descriptions that constitute our sense of what it means to know, to nurture, to

think, to succeed" (Grumet, 1988, p. 61). How then does this impact one's identity as a

woman? For McCarthy, it seems, the implication was one of living very much in-

between the lives of her male contemporaries and the societal expectations placed on

women within acomplex time in Canada's history.

 81

In A Fool in Paradise (1990) McCarthy crafts an image of herself as aserious artist;

however, her life as teacher is also of great importance to this study. On my own path to

become an educator Ihave been challenged to question why Iwant to teach and what it

means to be ateacher. For McCarthy, awoman much like the female artists in the

Beaver Hall Hill Group who had to live within specific limitations of time and place, it

was an obvious and necessary choice. Teaching was avocation offered her agreat deal,

as it allowed her the financial security and freedom to pursue her art. At the age of 21,

McCarthy, whose main concern was to start earning aliving, was working as afree-lance

artist and teaching Saturday morning art classes when she was presented with the opening

of ateaching position at Central Technical School in Toronto. Here she met Peter

Haworth, director of the art department, who also became an influential man in her life.

She wrote:

Peter Haworth was ayoung, good-looking, curly-headed autocrat, who was

gradually transforming amediocre secondary school art department into a

dynamic powerhouse. He was given unusual freedom in hiring his staff, and

instead of hiring teachers who had taken summer courses in art, he hired artists

and hoped they could teach. He encouraged them to go on being artists and

fought astand-up battle at the Board of Education on the issue. Someone down at

College Street (where the central authority for the Toronto Board of Education

was located) attempted to forbid him to practise as astained-glass designer while

he was holding down afull-time teaching job... But he won, not just for himself

but for all of the artists and craftsmen in the system. He convinced the authorities
 82
that an effective teacher must also be apracticing artist. (McCarthy, 1990, p.

121-122)

McCarthy's struggle to strike abalance between her teaching and her art begins to take

shape as she was given aclass not of art students but of vocational students. She

remembered these students as, "toughies, ready to walk all over an inexperienced teacher

it was also true that nobody in the art department cared about them, and Iwas free to

do anything that would keep them out of trouble. . . . This was how Idiscovered the

magic of cut paper as amedium, easier than drawing, faster than painting, spectacular

and fun" (McCarthy, 1990, p. 123-124). In the years to follow, McCarthy negotiated

between her teaching life and her life as an artist, taking school holidays as time to escape

to the wilderness she so loved to capture on the canvas and working as ateacher to pay

her own way in the world.

McCarthy's second autobiography, The Good Wine: An Artist Comes ofAge (1991),

begins in 1950 when she is 40 and opens with the observation:

Since 1932, when Ifirst began teaching, Ihad been struggling up along dark

tunnel crowded with obstacles that took all my strength and ingenuity to get by...

Ahead of me Icould see arelease: asabbatical leave, afull year when Iwould be

free of teaching, free to stop hurrying, free to paint, to breathe deeply, and to look

about. (p. 1-2)

Having spent 18 years struggling for respect as ateacher and recognition as an artist,

McCarthy was planning to take her sabbatical year to travel to Europe with acolleague

and friend, Virginia Luz, whom McCarthy referred to as Ginny. It seems this was not an
 83
easy adventure for McCarthy to pursue, as she was leaving behind the responsibility of

caring for her mother, as well as her home at Fool's Paradise. Oddly enough, in the midst

of writing about the going-away celebrations for her and Luz, McCarthy recalls the

following:

A few days before the end of term Peter Haworth, head of the art department, who

had been so co-operative about letting us go at the same time, put Ginny and me

side by side against the wall of the stairwell leading up to the life-drawing room

and solemnly traced an outline around each of us. "Just make sure you fit into that

when you come back." (McCarthy, 1991, p. 7)

Such awell-meaning gesture of support still raises the question of the female body and

how it continues to be objectified. McCarthy deemed it significant enough to write about

the incident, but she does not give any indication regarding how it affected her.

Over their year abroad McCarthy and Luz traveled through England, Italy and Greece,

and other countries, and both had great moments of painting as well as experiencing the

joy of travel. However, this journey came to an end and it was back to teaching and what

McCarthy refers to as the year she "was more active than ever as an exhibiting artist"

(McCarthy, 1991, p. 39). In the pages of The Good Wine, the reader is introduced to a

vibrant, happy, and very busy McCarthy, managing to structure her teaching life in a

manner which allowed for more year long trips to follow, feeding both her artistic and

pedagogical lives. Presenting herself as atrue pioneer, she ventured beyond the borders

of Canada on asolo trip that took her to Tokyo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, Egypt, and

back to Greece and Italy. Of this journey McCarthy (1991) noted:

 84
One aspect of the year that surprised and pleased me was eye contact with

people Imet on the street, in buses, anywhere. Was it because Ilooked at them

first? At home Ifeel invisible unless the passer-by turns out to be an

acquaintance who knows something about me. Then Iam automatically thought

of in my setting, my family, my work, my home and neighbourhood, but seldom

known for myself. Abroad, especially in the Middle East, which Ihad most

feared, Iwas seen by every passer-by, observed, and observed with interest and

approval. With no context to define me, people saw me, and judged me by what

they saw. Ifelt alive in myself, and not just in relation to society. Ifelt real. (p.

103)

In this realization, McCarthy experiences anew moment of becoming, identifying herself

outside of the confines of alife that would limit her opportunities, her artistic talents, and

her female voice. She moves beyond the influences of those who shaped her

younger years, and begins to take on her own biographical image where she cannot be

identified simply as ateacher, artist, or awoman. Rather, her story is acomplex telling

of adventures fraught with challenges, joy, and one that is ultimately about alife well-

lived.

Near the end of The Good Wine, McCarthy speaks of the experience of participating in

the making what she terms as the "McCarthy Film" (Doris McCarthy: Heart of a

Painter.) Here it is revealed that Wendy Wacko, the producer of the film, was aformer

student of McCarthy' s(just like Joyce Wieland), offering an example of how ateacher

can inform the life of astudent and vice versa. McCarthy (1991) remembers:
 85
Would Ilet her make afilm of my life and work? By this time she was

convinced that Iwas agreat artist, under-recognized. Icouldn't help agree to the

under-recognized, and it was pleasant to hear that Iwas agreat artist, and besides,

Ilove to act. So yes, of course." (p. 203)

The notion of being under-recognized resonated for McCarthy (and ultimately for me)

throughout the various autobiographical texts and the film. McCarthy's apparent need

for recognition says something about her need to know that when she is gone her effect in

the world will remain.

In the process of Heart of aPainter, the filmmakers joined McCarthy as she travelled

through the Badlands of Western Canada, as well as to England, where she speaks of

being able to revisit her past. Of this latter trip she declares:

Wendy and Ieach had avery personal thrill. For me it was to be back in the

Central School of Arts and Crafts, where Nory and George and Ihad studies over

forty-five years earlier, actually in the very painting studio where Ihad drawn

from the nude model and agonized over the criticisms of the teacher. For Wendy

the high spot was our filming morning at Stonehenge. She had been excited by

what she had learned about it in my history of art class when she had been a

student at CTS, and had made up her mind to see it for herself. But since those

days Stonehenge had become an endangered species, and she was assured that it

would take at least six months to get through the red tape that protected it.

Wendy just smiled gently, and in aday had managed to secure written permission

(McCarthy, 1991, p. 208).

 86
The making of Heart of aPainter was not an easy process, as is common with

independent productions. They ran into financial problems, causing adelay in

production. Shut down due to budgetary concerns and time constraints, Heart of a

Painter lost its original director, Richard Leiterman, who was replaced by Peter

Shatalow. Usually this would b8 avery upsetting process for afilm project, as it is akin

to changing the author part way through the writing of anovel, but McCarthy confesses

that she was quite satisfied to have the original director replaced stating:

Ihad begun to be very uneasy about the person emerging in Richard's film. Was

Ireally contemplative? Did Idrift dreamily, brooding about the nature of art?

Peter Shatalow, the new, young director, listened to my misgivings, and Ithank

him for his skilful editing that used Richard's (the first director) rushes to build a

more plausible me. (McCarthy, 2006, p. 225)

This statement creates acritical awareness. From the opening pages of her first

auto/biography—her "becoming"—through to the final page of her last publication,

which shows apicture of her roller-blading at an elderly age, McCarthy was concerned

with controlling how she would be remembered, as an artist, adventurer, an educator, and

interestingly enough, quite often an actor.

While speaking about the making of Heart of aPainter, McCarthy does afine job of

depicting the complex and often difficult nature of film production while also discussing

the camaraderie and joy that can accompany the feeling of being apart of such a

collaborative process. McCarthy describes the film as a:

 87
Marvelous support.. . like most works of art, it is not perfect. Isee afew

flaws that Iwould love to correct, but it has agood pace, never loses it's

audience, says most of the things Iwould like to tell agroup, and says them well.

(McCarthy, 1991, p. 213)

Through all of her teaching, art, writing, and life, McCarthy embraces the idea that "in

the imagination anything goes that can be imagined, and the limits of the imagination is a

totally human world" (Frye, 1964, p. 13). In the films and in her auto/biographies, she

presents herself as awoman who was never afraid to imagine alife beyond the social

confines of the day.

In yet another auto/biography, Doris McCarthy: Ninety Years Wise (2005), this construct

of an independent woman, in love with her art and land, unflinching and unapologetic

regarding the choices she made through out her life, is once again introduced. In it we

meet an elderly McCarthy who states:

Icannot say no to the old students who want to see me or to those who know me

only through my books and want to meet me." This book documents aprivate

journey to "focus on sorting out my life and making the paintings that are the best

way Ihave to share my delight for the world with my friends and everyone else.

(p. 12)

At the age of 90, still an artist and an educator, she still seems to possess the independent

streak that allowed her to forge through life, creating her own path along the way. This

memoir is really much more of ajournal detailing asummer spent at her summer home at

Georgian Bay. It is about friends, as well as arumination on solitude. Ironically, she

 88
gives rise to the opposed earlier conceptualization of herself, by the first director of

Heart of aPainter, that she had opposed, as awoman in contemplation.

One Last Story: The Latest Auto/biography

In 2006, McCarthy published My Life, her fourth auto/biography, co-authored with

Charis Wahl. In it McCarthy wrote:

Autobiography drove me back to the diaries that have sat idle on my shelves for

years and made me relive the passions, the heartbreaks, and the raptures. It gave

me back my girlhood and the years when Iwas discovering my artist's eye and

the heady joy of creation. (p. 2)

This most recent publication is an amalgamation of her earlier auto/biographies, more

focused and concise, perhaps thanks to the presence of her co-author. From its opening

pages, McCarthy is once again quick to define herself as an independent woman stating,

"I was brought up on the nursery rhyme about Monday's child and Tuesday's child; as I

was Thursday's child, Itook it for received truth that Iwould have 'far to go' and do alot

of traveling" (p. 7). Although she travelled far and wide, McCarthy always returned home

to southern Ontario, ultimately to the place that has become well known as her "Fool's

Paradise."

Throughout my graduate studies the notion of dwelling—within language, place, and

curriculum—has been recurring. So too, it seems, it has been in the life of McCarthy—
 89
dwelling both in the physical sense of place as well as dwelling in the imaginative and

contemplative in-between spaces required for painting, teaching, and writing, allowing

her to find asense of home outside of southern Ontario and Fool's Paradise. This notion

of dwelling returns us to the discussion of the third space, which Sorensen (2003) refers

to as "the bridge between dichotomies[,J with equally clear views on both sides. The aim

is not to get to get to either side but to grow and develop while moving in between" (p.

277). Her travels and "wanderings" figure prominently in McCarthy's life. On this she

notes:

Ibelieve its roots lie in Haliburton during my earliest days as an artist, when those

working holidays with Ethel Curry gave me inspiration, release from the

constraints of living with Mother, and the congenial companionship with afellow

painter. For painting demands aconcentration and sensibility that grows into an

intimacy with the subject. When you are successful, you come to know the land,

not just see it. (When you fail to understand it, you cannot tell the story of what

you see, and your paintings fail). (McCarthy, 2006, p. 237)

Travelling not only offered her new landscapes to paint but also the opportunity to build

relationships with fellow artists. While McCarthy never married, there are afew vital

relationships that are repeatedly mentioned as significant in her life. These include her

childhood friendship with her neighbourhood friend Marjorie and her adult friendship

with Virginia Luz, with whom she taught and spent her summers painting at Georgian

Bay. These relationships were obviously vital to McCarthy, navigating her way through

the world as an unmarried woman at atime when such alifestyle broke social

convention. Of her love life, she says little with the exception of abrief mention of an
 90
affair with an unnamed married man. She describes this man as "a comfortable,

understanding person, intelligent, with anotable sense of humour and enough foibles that

one laughed at him as well as with him" (McCarthy, 2006, p. 109). Their affair lasted for

ayear and half before ending the first time, but then resumed for an undisclosed period.

McCarthy writes honestly about the difficulty of having this relationship and her own

longing for marriage and children with this man. When it became clear this was not

possible, she ended the affair:

Imade the rules: we would be in private as we were in public, with no more

lovemaking, no more intimate talk.. . . Ihave no regrets, and believe now, as I

did then, that alove that cares for the other person more than for oneself is not a

sin in the eyes of God. Ialso know that it takes real toughness to defy asocial

taboo, atoughness that Ihad but that he could not summon. (McCarthy, 2006, p.

112)

The final words of this quote are paramount to the identity McCarthy has constructed of

herself through her life writing—tough, resolute, and independent; dwelling very much in

the spaces between the societal expectations of her day and all that she dreamed possible

for herself.

Doris McCarthy: Artist/Educator/Woman

Obviously, Doris McCarthy has felt agreat need near the end of her life to "author-ize"

herself in the world. The image she paints through her auto/biographies is that of a

woman who is passionate about her life and the way she will be remembered. After all,
 91
at the age of 92 she once again put pen to paper and published My Life. From her early

days with her father when she helped with the chores at the summer cabin, to her days as

aself-sufficient woman, portrayed as having basically built her home from the foundation

up by herself—the woman depicted in these texts is independent and uncompromising.

Through her relationships with her former students Joyce Wieland and Wendy Wacko, as

described in her auto/biographies and in the films, her role as inspiring teacher evolved

into that of amentor and friend. Sarah Milroy, former editor of Canadian Art magazine,

contributes abrief summation at the end of Ninety Years Wise:

One of the fascinating things about afew hours with McCarthy is the chance to

witness awoman utterly at ease with who she is and the life she has led. As well,

one can gaze directly into the pool of ideas that sustained the Group and

underpinned Canadian art at acrucial moment in its becoming: their love of their

country, their essentially unintellectual relationship to their art, their loyalty to

nature and their relative indifference to the history of art as asource to draw from.

Making apainting was something to be worked out between you and the trees and

rocks in front of you. The work of other artists had no place in the equation.

(McCarthy, 2005, p. 109-110)

Through reading and examining her ongoing need to ensure that she is remembered in

very particular ways, Iquestion how at ease she has been with who she is and the life she

has led. Indeed, as Ilook at the cover of The Good Wine (1991), Isee the smiling face of

awoman looking directly at the camera, as if ready to take on the world. Described by

reviewers on the back cover as offering a"gentle account" by a"frank and unique voice,"

in abook "so direct and simple it seems to reinvent its form," perhaps this simple memoir
 92
offers hope to McCarthy that she will continue to be heard, and that her art will not

vanish into obscurity once she is gone. What seems evident through both the films and

the life writing of Doris McCarthy is that she does not want to be remembered as a

woman who sought sympathy nor expected an easy time due to her sex. She pursued her

life as an artist without compromise. However, what remains unclear is whether she was

interested in forging new spaces for female artists in the world of Canadian art.

Regardless, McCarthy' sneed or impulse to write about her life has opened up new spaces

of possibility for women today seeking to look "back through our mothers."

Recently in my yoga class, the instructor made the following comment: "Life is not about

struggling to find peace, it is about finding peace amidst the struggle." While she was

speaking to the challenge of letting go of ego in the midst of trying to find balance in tree

pose, this resonated with me. Conjuring memories of many discussions Ihave engaged

in during the course of my studies in education, Iwas left reflecting on the human

instinct, when confronted with the messiness of life, to place things in some recognizable

order. Merleau-Ponty (1967) suggests: "The world is not what Ithink, but what Ilive

through. Iam open to the world, Ihave no doubt that Iam in communication with it, but

Ido not possess it; it is inexhaustible" (p. xvi-xvii). In being open to the world, we in

many ways contradict that which we are raised to believe, that life is designed to follow

concrete patterns, beginning with childhood through to the challenges of adulthood. In

exploring the power of writing as an imaginative act Greene (2000) notes:

Something very important [happens] in mediating great events through asingle

consciousness, viewing the personal in relation to the public, the public from a
 93
private point of view. Iwas beginning to recognize the importance of a

vantage point when it came to the dialogue that is history. As time went on and I

came closer to discovering my own 'voice,' meaning my woman's voice, through

the writing Iwas doing, Ilearned much more about vantage point and about

history. (p. 107)

McCarthy utilized both film and auto/biography as methods for discovering avoice that

extends even further than the reach of her painting, subsequently opening herself to the

world and inviting her audience to engage in an ongoing dialogue with her experience.

Perhaps this evolved out of her many years as ateacher, or perhaps it evolved out of a

raised awareness of the silenced voices of many of the female artists who preceded her.

Regardless, McCarthy' swords, images, and voice will continue to resonate in the world,

leaving her mark on Canadian history as an artist-educator and as awoman.

 94
Conclusion: Acknowledging the Gray - The Stories In-Between

In 2006, the Canadian film Away From Her was released to international critical acclaim.

The feature film directorial debut of actress Sarah Polley, the film is based on the short

story The Bear Comes Over the Mountain by Canadian author Alice Munro and tells the

story of an aging couple dealing with the devastating effects of Alzheimer's disease on

their relationship. Shot in Ontario in winter and possessing aquintessential imagery

associated with Canadian cinema, producer Jennifer Wiess describes Away From Her as

capturing "rural Canada in acinematic style. These locations, especially the exteriors, are

crucial to understanding these people and the life they have set up for themselves.

They've made the choice to make life simpler. But life isn't always simple and there is

always history" (Capri Releasing, 2006). In Away From Her, Polley repeats the image of

Fiona, played by Julie Christie, the character suffering from Alzheimer's, cross-country

skiing across the vast fields of snow. This image could be interpreted in anumber of

ways. It might represent adifferent time in Fiona' slife, before Alzheimer's, at her home

in the country with her husband, or perhaps the endless fields of snow are symbolic of the

place that Fiona retreats to amidst the chaos of her fading memories. As she forges a

new life in arest home, her husband is forced to confroht what their relationship used to

be, while coming to terms with what the future holds given Fiona's condition. Gadamer

suggests that:

Memory, possessed as 'one's own,' is something that is formed over time and

each of us carries - more strongly put, each of us is - the unique residues of such

formation over the course of our individual lives. Who Ibear myself to be is
 95
constituted by what Ibear forward of my life experiences. (Jardine & Rinehart,

2003, p. 78)

As Inear the end of writing my thesis, Away From Her seemed afitting film with which

to engage. Directed by aCanadian woman, Sarah Polley, and based on ashort story by a

female Canadian author, it marries together the complexity of personal memory and

identity while also reflecting the fondness for landscape explored in the work of the

Canadian artists already discussed. What does this mean though? Given the presence of

women in creative positions of power, in charge of the narrative lens of this film, have we

then reached some tangible, quantifiable level of equality in the world? Even upon

typing the question Iam reminded of my classmate who raised her hand to protest the

term feminism, or of the numerous times Ihave been subjected to harassment on afilm

set. In recent years Ihave participated twice at the Women in The Director's Chair

workshop, organized by Creative Women Workshops in Vancouver, held at the Banff

Centre. The objective of the workshop is to surround new female directors with the

equipment and professional crew required to film ascene that they have written. During

both sessions Ihave attended (as ascript supervisor), the women Ihave met have

represented the cultural and geographical diversity of Canada, and the nurturing and

supportive atmosphere has helped create adynamic learning opportunity for all involved.

Despite the success of this workshop, and similar programs at the NFB created to

encourage more opportunities for women and other marginalized groups, Iam still left

with the realization that in my ten years experience in the mainstream film industry in

Canada, Ihave worked with afemale director only once. Leading me to revisit my initial
 96
questions regarding how and who influences and informs the ways women make

meaning of their experience in the world.

In her song What it Feels Like for aGirl (2000), pop artist and icon Madonna sings:

Strong inside but you don't know it

Good little girls they never show it
When you open up your mouth to speak
Could you be alittle weak

Chorus:
Hurt that's not supposed to show
And tears that fall when no one knows
When you're trying hard to be your best
Could you be alittle less

This is an example of the myriad ways in which women's voices have found an artistic

voice through which to address issues of representation. Reflecting upon the last hundred

years, women have made great strides in areas of writing, music, and the visual arts.

However, as Iengage in conversations with women, (some who often make the conscious

choice to not practice the multiple rights that women are now afforded, such as the right

to vote), Iam increasingly concerned that contemporary understandings of past female

experience have been lost, overlooked, and in many cases, diminished within society.

There has been arecent explosion in the Western media and cult of celebrity that has

shifted towards adisconcerting portrayal of young woman in popular culture (such as

Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and Lindsay Lohan), suggesting the need to critically

unpack how irresponsible, reckless, and unintelligent behaviour may effect how young

woman make meaning and sense out of their own lives. Perhaps resulting in an

immediacy for reclaiming and locating the stories of women who have struggled and
 97
fought for representation and voice. Documentary film and auto/biography, on the

surface, may seem to exist as separate modes of communication. The former is amore

collaborative and technical medium, requiring one to venture out into the world and

engage with others, necessitating complex equipment and knowledge of how to shoot a

movie; the latter seemingly amore solitary endeavour, requiring little more than a

computer or pen and paper and the time and solitude with which to write. However, for

all of their differences they have both emerged as significant and ameaningful means of

expression, ultimately requiring the author/filmmaker to possess an openness to sharing

their work with the world.

Circling back, in this study Iattempt to explore, through the films and autobiographical

texts of Doris McCarthy, away to envision and understand the ways in which women's

voices might be included in our cultural memory. Ultimately, this study has been

concerned with that which all hermeneutic studies are, creating ahistorical consciousness

surrounding the search for truth, regarding the lives of women and the social conditions

that influence/influenced our opportunity and experience in the world. Prior to viewing

these and movies and reading McCarthy's life writing, my knowledge regarding the lives

and artistic works of the various women named in this text (from Prudence Reward to

Judy Chicago, the artist who conceived of The Dinner Party) was minimal. While in

many ways it was my love for film and story that brought me to this path, it has become

the search to understand what can be learned with regard to representation and identity

through life writings that has kept me on it. Along the way Ihave discovered arich

history of female artists who struggled to live, often at personal expense, so that they
 98
might pursue their passion. In addition to meeting these women, the search for

pedagogical possibilities in film and life writing has maintained an underlying presence

along the way. The films and autobiographical texts Ihave examined have emerged as

mediums of expression that embrace imagination and the act of remembering, offering

rich possibilities for exploring the past and understanding the lives lived by female

Canadian artists. In A Room of One's Own (1929/2001), Virginia Woolf charged her

readers to take on the task of challenging the current social conditions stating:

How can Ifurther encourage you to go about the business of life? Young women,

Iwould say, and please attend, for the perforation is beginning, you are, in my

opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made adiscovery of any sort of

importance. You have never shaken an empire or led an army into battle. The

plays of Shakespeare are not by you, and you have never introduced abarbarous

race to the blessings of civilization. What is your excuse? (p. 48)

One cannot argue that things have changed in the last hundred years; an evolution has

taken place as aresult of the great strides, sacrifices, and efforts of women like Doris

McCarthy. However, their exists the potential for complacency in today's world, amidst

the illusion that there is nothing left to push against or fight for and the assumption

women are afforded all of the same opportunities that are offered men. As Gilmore

(1994) notes:

The subject of feminism and the subject positions of women have been narrowed

and unified in the name of political representation and social change. The result,

however, has been registered as an increasing alienation of women from the name

and feminism and the single identity of women as asocial group or class. (p. xi)
 99
As Ilook around at the women Ihave studied with, worked with, and whose works I

have read, Iam reminded of Grumet's (1988) invitation to "think back through our

mother's" (p. 183) so that we may continue to mediate the in-between spaces, pushing

against the "ambivalent place[s] of our own histories" (Grumet, 1988, P. 192).

My intention for this thesis is that it will serve to create new opportunities for dialogue

and learning. Perhaps the greatest misplaced assumption is that when one speaks of

being the Other, whether that be aperson of colour, aperson of adifferent gender, or

religion, that the desire is to assign blame, for past wrongs perpetrated upon each other.

The greatest challenge seems to be the creation of adialogue surrounding issues of

cultural politics that allow for the creation of new understandings. This was part of the

motivation for turning to hermeneutics for my thesis, that and for its dedication to the

potential for discovering truth through aesthetic experience. As Grondin (2003)

illuminates:

Knowledge of art is that of recognition, in the sense of anamnesis: it allows us to

rediscover our world for what it is, in revealing to us it's 'essence' to talks in

Heidegger's terms. What stands out in awork of art is the truth of the world such

as its metamorphosis into awork, which is for us an experience of recognition in

both its meanings: that of knowledge and that of thanks. Art opens our eyes. (p.

44)

My thesis has the capacity to stimulate new discussions surrounding the history of

women's experience in our world and as aresult effect change in the world. As I

confront my own future, as ateacher, filmmaker, and as awomen, Irecognize that what
 100
has evolved for me over the last four years is amuch richer and deeper understanding

of the influences on what it means to be Canadian, the importance of voices from

different backgrounds to be heard, and the validation that my experiences are critical to

my knowledge of the world and what Ican offer in return.

Doris McCarthy's autobiographies allowed me to delve even deeper into the life story of

the woman Iwas introduced to in the movies. Through her participation in both of these

mediums she is able to "author" her own life, creating inter-textual spaces for exploration

and understanding, ensuring that the generations to follow will know of her experience

through her own voice. As previously stated, she maybe the only Canadian female artist

who was producing works at the same time as the Group of Seven who was able to speak

for herself in these films, the rest - Prudence Reward, Sarah Robertson, Anne Savage -

were not able to do so as they passed away before amovement had taken astrong enough

hold for the National Film Board of Canada to deem their stories worthy of filmic

representations. As such, the Canadian cultural imagination regarding who were

important artists was only able to consider their male contemporaries. In sharing the

richness of her life, her passion for her art and her teaching, and in acknowledging the

restrictions that were placed on her by her sex, McCarthy takes apro-active stance that

invites people of all backgrounds to learn not only of her success as an artist but also of

her success as ateacher. Through her own words the languages of film, life writing, and

art are combined for arich and meaningful study, creating athird space for understanding

women's stories. It is this third space, the creation of it, the learning of how to dwell

within it, to find the "peace in the struggle," that can lead the acknowledgement of it's
 101
discursive nature as "a site of the to and fro flow of language and discourse" (Aoki,

2003, P. 1), that will inform the ways in which Icontinue to learn and grow.

These films and autobiographies serve as examples of the ways of attaining asearch for

truth, creating anew space for exploring the lives of individuals and groups who have

lived outside of the realm of the dominant patriarchal discourses, and that have long held

afirm grip on how we understand the world we live in and those with whom we share it.

We live in acomplex world where issues of nation and nationality can be as blurred as

the imaginary borders that have led to their creation. Over the length of my graduate

studies Ihave explored film as an educational medium, delving into issues of cultural

politics, representation of the Other, and as amedium through which new discourses can

evolve and allow for previously unheard voices to manifest themselves in the world.

Acknowledging these films as visual texts to be read also realizes that "textual

interpretation as conversation is amutual and non-hierarchical exchange in which

meanings of both the critic and text are expanded by their interaction, an interaction

grounded in openness and listening" (Staskowski, 2004, p. 77). Ihave tried to listen

intently to the words spoken, the visuals constructed, and the stories put to paper as I

have written this thesis, adding my own interpretation of them and the understandings of

the people and issues of culture and gender that they represent. This is something Ihope

to carry forward in my life, as an educator/storyteller/filmmaker/woman, constantly

striving to be aware of the in-between spaces that can be created through discourse and

language.
 102
In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf (1929/2001) looked to the future in her

discussion surrounding women and fiction, noting, "in ahundred years, Ithought,

reaching my own doorstep, women will have ceased to be the protected sex. Logically

they will take part in all activities and exertions that were once denied them. The

nursemaid will heave coal. The shopwoman will drive an engine" (p. 49). Indeed, she

was correct, agreat deal has changed for women in since she wrote A Room of One's

Own. However, it has not been aseamless process and women still stand on the outside

of many institutions, societies, and communities in the position of the 'Other.' In fact, it

can be argued that even within the walls of these institutions women are still positioned

in anegative way, as they struggle to find the best way to live in aworld that demands so

much of them. It is in the midst of these struggles that the need for an awareness of the

deeply embedded, often overlooked notions of what it means to be awoman/an artist/a

teacher are so in need of examination:

Man [woman] learns about himself [herself] only through his [her] acts, through

the exteriorisation of his [her] life and through the effects it produces on others.

He [She] comes to know himself [herself] only by the detour of understanding,

which is, as always, an interpretation. (Ricoeur, 1981, p. 52)

It is through Doris McCarthy's auto/biographies, in both film and in written text, that she

is able to seek to understand her life within the framework of her time and lived

experience while also sharing her insights with women like myself, who unknown to her,

struggle with similar questions of how best to live in the world. At the end of Ninety

Years Wise Doris McCarthy (2005) writes the following:

 103
On those rare nights at the cottage when sleep just doesn't come Iplay agame

that is almost better than sleep. Ilie quietly with my eyes closed and remember

with gratitude the dear people, many how long since dead, who have given me

such arich and happy life. High school teachers, CGIT leaders, inspiring artists

from my art college days, painting companions, neighbours, family. Isay thank

you to each of them, hoping that the love Ifeel can reach them wherever they are.

Long before Ihave exhausted Iam asleep. (p. 95)

Although Ihave never met Doris McCarthy, Ifeel as though Ihave come to know her

through reading her life writing and watching her in the two films of which she was apart.

She and the other women discussed in this text are responsible for laying the groundwork

for generations of women to follow leading, hopefully, to the creation of astrong female

voice in Canadian art.

In my introduction, Ispoke of the events of September ll, 2001, and how the images

and conversations that emerged in the weeks to follow set the world on anew path. On a

much more personal level, it impacted the way in which Iwas to take up my pursuit of

being ateacher, challenging me to take up the complex nature of hegemony, cultural

politics, and the importance of critical thinking. The following summer Iwas working on

an American produced television movie when Iwas drawn into aconversation with the

assistant to one of the stars about the complex social, political, and economic factors that

contributed to what has been deemed as an attack on America. When Ispoke my

thoughts regarding how the Bush administration had treated the event in avery black and

white manner - coining the phrase "you are either with us or against us" - and effectively
 104
ignored the in-between gray spaces that would allow for any critical discussion

surrounding that day, this man was immediately offended. By trying to locate that

incident within abroader global and historical context he accused me of siding with the

terrorists, and echoed the sentiment of George Bush by continually asking, "So are you

saying that [the attacks] were justified?" Although this man openly identified himself as

aconservative Republican, this was adifficult time in which to express contrary ideas

about the events of 9/11. Regardless, it was moments like that contributed to my own

personal journey to critically question what is presented as fact - in this case where were

all the women artists? Ibegan this journey with aquote by Thomas King (2003), who

tells us "the truth about stories is that's all we are" (p. 153). Ihope in pointing my finger

at the stories of Doris McCarthy, Anne Savage, Prudence Heward, and Sarah Robertson I

have contributed to the creation of anew, discursive space in which the value of their

stories will be recognized.

 105
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