Doris Lusk
Aotearoa New Zealand, b.1916, d.1990
Power House, Tuai
- 1948
- oil on board
- Donated from the Canterbury Public Library Collection, 2001
- 531 x 457mm
- 95/65
- View on google maps
Tags: automobiles, buildings (structures), landscapes (representations), people (agents), urban landscapes
Lusk described the power station at Tuai to art historian Lisa Beaven as a “gothic building in the middle of the wild hills”. Certainly, this striking oil painting plays up its strange incongruity, combining an abruptly elevated viewpoint with a heightened, stylised approach reminiscent of the unsettling streetscapes of Italian metaphysical painter Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978). The tiny human figures moving briskly across the wide driveway accentuate the immense building towering over them, while the angled cars, curved road and power lines marching into the distance suggest a confluence of dynamic forces, barely contained.
(Doris Lusk: Practical Visionary, 4 June – 30 October 2016)
Exhibition History
Brought to light, November 2009- 22 February 2011
Doris Lusk emerged as a major figure in New Zealand landscape painting during the 1940s. Her work often bears similarities with the Canterbury regionalists in that she favoured painting wide open and unpopulated landscapes. In the paintings ‘Canterbury Plains from Cashmere Hills’ and ‘Towards Omakau, Central Otago’ the high viewpoint taken emphasises the structure of the landscape, a primary concern of Lusk’s. She simplifies the shapes of the hills, the patterns of eroded gullies on hillsides and the rhythmic shapes of trees in the foregrounds of both paintings. She was also compelled by the presence of built structures in the landscape. The formidable powerhouse in ‘Powerhouse, Tuai’ dominates the scene with the people in the foreground dwarfed by the presence of this monumental industrial structure, a feeling further intensified by the lack of a visible horizon.
Related reading: exhibition-1011
Collection
Doris Lusk Towards Omakau
Painted in 1942, the year Doris Lusk moved to Ōtautahi Christchurch, Towards Omakau is an exhilaratingly expansive view of a landscape near Alexandra, in Central Otago.
The composition accentuates the numerous lines that stretch over its surface, as they curve around eroded cliff faces, and extend in darting tangents as rivers and roads and form regimented verticals in the shelterbelts. Sheep trails crisscross gently rounded hills, echoing clouds that swirl overhead. Reflecting on her practice in later years, Doris stated: “[I] have tried to get to the heart of the matter, involved with the complexity rather than simplicity in describing the nature of our land.”
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- 21 July 2024)
Collection
Doris Lusk Landscape, Overlooking Kaitawa, Waikaremoana
In 1948, Doris Lusk and her family stayed in the Lake Waikaremoana region near Te Urewera and Hawke’s Bay, spending time with her husband’s daughter from his previous marriage. Lusk took on the complex challenge of depicting the local environment and the recently completed government hydroelectric scheme, designed to feed the increasing urban appetite for electricity.
'Landscape, Overlooking Kaitawa, Waikaremoana' is one of four works she completed, and includes construction workers’ temporary accommodation in the foreground. Mountains and buildings appear in the works as competing presences, each claiming their own monumental weight and status.
(From Here on the Ground, 18 May – 17 November 2024)
Exhibition
Doris Lusk: Practical Visionary
Intricate landscapes and imaginative explorations by renowned New Zealand painter Doris Lusk.