Doris Lusk

Doris More Lusk (5 May 1916 – 14 April 1990) was a New Zealand artist and art teacher, potter, university lecturer. She was born in Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand on 5 May 1916.^[1]

Early life

Lusk was the daughter of Alice Mary (née Coats), and Thomas Younger Lusk, a draughtsman and architect. She had two older siblings, Marion and Paxton.

The family moved to Hamilton where she went to primary school. A woman who had an art studio near to the Lusks, encouraged her to paint. In 1928 the family returned to Dunedin when her father joined the architectural firm, Mandeno and Frazer. Lusk had one more year at Arthur Street primary school before attending Otago Girl's High School in 1930.

In 1933 she left high school, before she matriculated, and enrolled in the King Edward Technical College, the formal name for the Dunedin School of Art.^[1] Lusk enrolled against her father's wishes and later noted there had been 'one hell of a row' about her decision.^[2]:106

Lusk attended the art school from 1934 to 1939. The school was a member of the La Trobe programme which involved the importation of practising artists from England to staff New Zealand schools. These artists included W. H. Allen and R. N Field who arrived in 1925 and had a major impact on the Dunedin art scene.

Lusk was taught by Charlton Edgar and took life classes under Russell Clark in his studio.^[3]:54 Through a fellow student, Anne Hamblett, she met Colin McCahon and Toss Woollaston.^[3]:54

Career

Lusk held her first solo show in a private home in Dunedin in 1940.^[4]:119 In 1943 she and her family moved to Christchurch, where due to having small children her painting output reduced.^[1]

In Christchurch Lusk became affiliated with The Group, an association of artists based in that city but with ties to artists throughout New Zealand.^[1] She quickly became well-established with special reference to her landscape painting.^[1] In the 1940s Lusk completed a series of paintings, including Landscape, Overlooking Kaitawa, Waikaremoana (1948), which documented the massive engineering projects underlying the development of the Lake Waikaremoana hydroelectric scheme in the central North Island.^[5]

In Gordon H Brown and Hamish Keith's 1969 book An introduction to New Zealand painting 1839–1967 (the first modern overview of painting in New Zealand) Lusk's work was contextualised with that of artists such as Rita Angus, McCahon and Toss Woollaston. The authors wrote:

In a number of ways the unpretentious, well-considered and solid qualities of her work summed-up a good deal that was thought to be the best tendencies of the Canterbury painters during this decade. In essence it was straightforward, uncomplicated and while not denying detail when necessary, remained uncluttered. Doris Lusk continued to develop this style through the 1940s and fifties with paintings like Tahananui, Power House at Tuai and Botanical Gardens, Hawera. ^[6]

In a 1996 monograph on the artist, art historian Lisa Beaven disputed this assessment, writing:

An analysis of her art throughout her career reveals a deep fascination with particular motifs, centring around industrial imagery in landscape settings. For more than five decades, Lusk consistently pursued this preoccupation, using different techniques and employing different media. From being the result of random excursions, Lusk's paintings were directed explorations, not just of the relationship between the structures and the land around them, but also of the buildings themselves, and aspects of the juxtapositions of interior and exterior, exposure and concealment, surface and depth. The manifold layers of meaning embedded in the buildings and their role in projecting a certain mood, suggest her painting may profit from being read as expressions of moods, metaphors and symbols.^[4]:9–10

In later years Lusk shifted her attention to specific sites, especially the beach and wharf at Onekaka.^[4]:10 Her late series of watercolours, The Arcade Awnings, based on the famous tourist scene at St Mark's Square in Venice, is held in the collection of the Auckland Art Gallery.^[7]

Career as a potter

In addition to her painting career, Lusk was also a pioneer potter in New Zealand.^[1] In 1947 she began teaching pottery at Risingholme Community Centre with Margaret Frankel, and worked there until 1967. She was president of the Canterbury Potters' Association from 1970 to 1972.^[1] In 1970 she was awarded a travel scholarship by the Canterbury Society of Arts and used this to research contemporary Australian ceramics in Canberra, Adelaide, Alice Springs and Melbourne.^[4]:122

Teaching career

Lusk was appointed a tutor at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts in 1966 and was made a permanent staff member within the following 18 months. She continued to teach at the School until 1981.^[8]

Major Exhibitions and Collections

Examples of Lusk's work are held by most New Zealand public art galleries. Significant works include Tahunanui in the Hocken Library; Tobacco Fields, Pangatotara, Nelson (1943) and The Pumping Station (1958) at the Auckland Art Gallery; Power House, Tuai (1948), Landscape, Overlooking Kaitawa, Waikaremoana (1948) and Canterbury Plains from Cashmere Hills (1952) at the Christchurch Art Gallery; Akaroa Harbour, Banks Peninsula (1949) in the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.^{[9][10][11][12][13][14]}

Lusk exhibited mainly with The Group in Christchurch in the 1940s and 1950s.^[1] In the 1950s and 1960s her work was regularly included in the Auckland City Art Gallery's annual surveys of recent New Zealand painting.^[15]

The first retrospective exhibition of Lusk's work was held at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 1966.^[1] A second retrospective was held at the Dowse Art Museum in 1973.^[1] A major exhibition of her landscape works, Landmarks: The Landscape Paintings of Doris Lusk, was held at the Christchurch Art Gallery in 1996, accompanied by a publication with contributions by Lisa Beaven and Grant Banbury.^[4]

References