Artist Info
Alexandra Luke
Alexandra Luke was a pioneering Canadian abstract painter who belonged to the Painters Eleven group. Her paintings are lauded for their use of colour, texture, and white space to create intense energy. Luke and her twin sister Isobel trained in nursing and graduated from Columbia Hospital for Women in Washington, D.C. Luke’s first husband Marcus Everett Smith ended in tragedy, with Smith dying four months into their marriage, and her second marriage was to Clarence Ewart McLaughlin, the grandson of the McLaughlin Carriage Company’s founder.
Luke didn’t begin painting until her late twenties and continued to do so until her death. She assisted in building Oshawa’s arts community while teaching herself to paint and became a member of various societies, including the Oshawa Historical Society and the Women’s Art Association. Luke began painting landscapes, but visiting modernist exhibitions in Toronto and Ottawa inspired her to pursue abstract art. Early attempts to break away from the archetype of a hobbyist painter inspired by the Group of Seven were unsuccessful, but Luke persevered and sought out further training in abstraction at the Banff School of Fine Arts (1945) and the Hans Hofmann School of Art (1947).
Luke began exhibiting her work in the early 1950s, with venues for display including the Canadian Group of Painters and the Picture Loan Society. She organized the first Canadian Abstract Exhibition (1952) where she would meet others who would form the Painters Eleven, one of Canada’s early prominent abstract art groups for whom Luke would serve a driving inspirational role. Shortly before her death in 1967, Luke and her husband offered the financial support and collection works necessary to establish The Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa. Her work has been collected and shown internationally.
