La Fontaine du Peyra-Vence [Fountain in Vence] (sic) by Alexandra Luke

Alexandra Luke (Margaret McLaughlin) was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1901. She drew from memory after walks through Westmount Park. When she was still very young her family moved to Oshawa where she attended the Oshawa public and high schools. Subsequently she trained at the Columbia Hospital, Washington, where she received her Registered Nurse’s Certificate and diploma and then returned to Oshawa. Widow of M. Everett Smith, she married C. Ewart McLaughlin in 1928. In painting she was self taught until 1945. She then trained under Jock MacDonald and A.Y. Jackson at the Banff School of Fine Arts in 1945 and later in 1947 with Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, Massachusetts. One of her paintings of Mount Assiniboine was purchased by the University of Alberta in 1945.

During her studies under Hans Hofmann she began to experiment with the explosive, colourful world of abstract expressionism from happy little watercolours to immense canvases in oils up to four feet high. Her bright new style brought her in contact with other painters in the Toronto area who were later to form an important group. She held her first solo show in Toronto at the Picture Loan Society in 1952. By then she had been exhibiting in most of the major exhibitions in Canada. Also in 1952 she organized the first Canadian Abstract Travelling Exhibition under the aegis of the South Ontario Circuit of Galleries.

It was at her studio on the shore of Lake Ontario at Oshawa, that the first meeting of Painters Eleven was held. The group included Jack Bush, Oscar Cahen, Tom Hodgson, J.W.G. MacDonald, Ray Mead, Kazuo Nakamura, William Ronald, Harold Town, Walter Yarwood and Hortense Gordon. They had been brought together earlier when their work was shown in a downtown Toronto department store and from that point one of them suggested that they should form a group. The group itself achieved its aims by making the general public more aware of non-objective and abstract painting. She exhibited with the group in Montreal, New York, and Toronto until they disbanded in 1960.

Alexandra Luke had a wide range of interests in the visual arts which included membership in the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour (1958); Canadian Group of Painters (1959); Ontario Society of Artists (1962); and for six years she conducted an art centre for children in Oshawa; built a ceramic studio in her home where she gave free instruction and gave advice to art students. Her work is included in the collections of the London Public Library and Art Museum, the Art Gallery of Oshawa, the University of Alberta and many others.

Source: "A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Volume II”, compiled by Colin S. MacDonald, Canadian Paperbacks Publishing Ltd, Ottawa, 1979