Emily enjoyed her studies in San Francisco. She attended school from the Fall of 1890 until Spring 1893 when her guardian wrote that she had 'played at art' long enough and it was time to come home. Her time in San Fancisco was both good and bad, as most life experiences often are. It was here, in still life painting class under the instruction of French painter Amedee Joullin that she was pushed to paint with quick decisiveness with her brush.
"Three times that morning he had stood behind my easel and roared, 'Scrape!' When he came the fourth time and said it again, my face went red.
'I have, and I have, and I have!' I shouted.
'Then scrape again!'
I dashed my palette knife down the canvas and wiped the gray ooze on my paint rag...The moment he was gone I slammed shut my paint-box, gathered up my dirty brushes, rushed from the room...
The professor came back and found my place empty. 'Where is the little Canadian?'
'Gone home mad.'
'Poor youngster, too bad, too bad! But look there!' He pointed to my study--'Capital! Spirit! Colour!'
...'Professor, you are very hard on that young Canadian girl!'
'Hard?' The Professor shrugged, spread his palms. 'Art--the girl has "makings". It takes red-hot fury to dig 'em up. If I'm harsh it's for her own good. More often than not worthwhile things hurt. Art's worthwhile.'"
--Growing Pains, p. 46, 47.
Emily, however, did not seem so pleased with her San Francisco work as her instructor had been.
"The type of work which I brought home from San Francisco was humdrum and unemotional--objects honestly portrayed, nothing more. As yet I had not considered what was underneath surfaces, nor had I considered the inside of myself. I was like a child printing alphabet letters. I had not begun to make words with the letters."
--Growing Pains, p. 73.
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