B.

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)

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)

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)