A mother of three, Lusk fitted her art around family life. Her daughter Jancis remembers her as an unstoppable force, “never still, thinking all the time, not a moment to waste”, who painted inside the playpen while the children ran riot outside it. She used outings with her children (and later her grandchildren) as opportunities for sketching or painting watercolours directly from the landscape. “I did not paint in a continual professional manner”, she revealed of her early years with The Group, “I painted when I could.” Lusk’s facility and flair in the watercolour medium are apparent in these two paintings, one depicting the small Canterbury settlement of Springfield with the main divide rising beyond it, and the other taking in the inland view from Pines Beach in Pegasus Bay. Executed in Lusk’s customarily decisive and economic style, they convey a variety of textures and spatial relationships within a few well-placed, brushstrokes.

(Doris Lusk: Practical Visionary, 4 June – 30 October 2016)