Her painting can be divided into several distinct phases: her early work, before her studies in Paris; her early paintings under the Fauvist influence of her time in Paris; a post-impressionist middle period before her encounter with the Group of Seven; and her later, formal period, under the post-cubist influences of Lawren Harris and American artist and friend, Mark Tobey. Carr used charcoal and watercolor for her sketches, and later, house paint thinned with gasoline on manila paper. The greatest part of her mature work was oil on canvas or, when money was scarce, oil on paper.