Alexandra Luke

Alexandra Luke (14 May 1901 - 1 June 1967), born Margaret Alexandra Luke in Montreal, Quebec, was a Canadian abstract artist who belonged to the Painters Eleven.

Early life
Luke was born in Montreal, one of a pair of twins, to parents Jesse Herbert Ritson Luke and Emma Russell Long. After she had finished high school in 1914, the family settled in Oshawa, Ontario. Soon after, both Alexandra and her twin sister Isobel began nurse's training at Columbia Hospital for Women in Washington, D.C.

After her graduation, Luke returned to Oshawa and married Marcus Everett Smith. Their marriage was short lived, as Smith died suddenly four months into their marriage, but Luke gave birth to his son, Richard, in 1926. Soon after, she was courted by Clarence Ewart McLaughlin, son of George W. McLaughlin and grandson of Robert McLaughlin, the founder of the McLaughlin Carriage Company. The couple married in 1928 and had their first child, Mary, in 1930.

Work and Painters Eleven
Luke began to create art in her late 20s. Inspired by two local artists, Dorothy Van Luven and Dorothy Henderson, she began to paint and organize arts classes around the city. She helped build the arts community in Oshawa and became a member of several boards and societies, including the Oshawa Women's Lyceum Club and Oshawa Historical Society.

Luke painted landscapes in a large, third floor studio in her and her husband's home and soon discovered abstract art after visiting modernist exhibitions in Toronto and Ottawa. Desperate to be seen as more than a hobbyist painter, she sought out a portfolio review by landscape artist Caven Atkins in 1944. Atkins spoke to her bluntly and told her that her Group of Seven-inspired style was not viable. This pushed her to further explore abstraction and receive formal art training at the Banff School of Fine Arts (renamed Banff Centre) in 1945, then at the Hans Hofmann School of Art in 1947. From Hofmann's teachings, she began to understand how to create energy in her paintings with colour, texture and the use of white space as well as formal structure.

She began to exhibit her work in the early 1950s at different venues, including the Canadian Group of Painters and the Picture Loan Society. In 1952, she organized the first Canadian Abstract Exhibition, where she met many of the members that would form the Painters Eleven. With this group, she was inspired to create more paintings, and she was able to showcase her works in a wide range of venues in the United States and Canada. She championed the promotion of Canadian abstract art and had a "strengthening, inspirational" role in the group.

In the Canadian Abstract Exhibition catalogue, she wrote:"'...more beauty and interest is to be found in the negative space created by the object than in the positive...Painting should not stop with the already discovered beauty, but should continue searching."

In 1980, her work Symphony (1957) (Robert McLaughlin Gallery) in the Painters Eleven in Retrospect exhibition was praised as "the surprise of the exhibition", demonstrating many of the virtues of Painters Eleven at their best: "their ambition to make painting more autonomous, like music; their marvellous freedom and fluidity of touch; their modest directness in relation to the subject; their freedom to move anywhere their inspiration took them".

Later life
Luke continued to paint and support abstract art until her death from ovarian cancer on 1 June 1967. She had created a sizable volume of work and participated in over 80 group exhibitions and solo shows. She had also been accepted into prestigious arts societies, including the Canadian Group of Painters in 1959 and the Ontario Society of Artists in 1960.

Shortly before her death, Luke and her husband Ewart offered major financial support and works from their own collection toward the creation of a public art gallery for the City of Oshawa. This became The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, named after Ewart's grandfather, in 1967.

Selected exhibitions

 * 1947: Riverside Museum, New York City
 * 1952: Picture Loan Society, Toronto
 * 1953: Martha Jackson Gallery, New York
 * 1955: Eglinton Gallery, Toronto
 * 1956: Riverside Museum, New York City, Annual Exhibition of American Abstract Artists, with 'Painters Eleven' of Canada
 * 1960: Simpson's Baker Galleries, Toronto
 * 1969: The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa
 * 1979: Painters Eleven in Retrospect, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa
 * 1987: The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Alexandra Luke: Continued Searching, retrospective
 * 2002: The Alexandra Luke Gallery, Bracebridge (retrospective)

Selected public collections

 * National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
 * The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa
 * Museum London, London, Ontario