Alexandra Luke

Luke was born "Margaret Alexandra Luke" in Montreal, Quebec. She was one of a pair of twins, born to parents Jesse Herbert Ritson Luke and Emma Russell Long. Shortly after, the family returned to their roots in Oshawa, Ontario. After finishing high school in 1914, both Margaret and her twin sister Isobel began nurse's training at Columbia Hospital for Women in Washington, D.C. Soon after, she was courted by Clarence Ewart McLaughlin, son of George W. McLaughlin and grandson of Robert McLaughlin, the founder of the McLaughlin Carriage Company. The couple married in 1928 and had their child, Mary, in 1930. == Work and Painters Eleven ==

Luke began to create art in her late 20s. Inspired by two local artists, Dorothy Van Luven and Dorothy Henderson, and Oshawa Historical Society. In 1980, her work Symphony (1957) (Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa) in the Painters Eleven in Retrospect exhibition was praised as "the surprise of the exhibition", demonstrating many of the virtues of Painters Eleven at their best: "their ambition to make painting more autonomous, like music; their marvellous freedom and fluidity of touch; their modest directness in relation to the subject; their freedom to move anywhere their inspiration took them". == Inner life ==

Luke's inner life was nourished by her imagination and reading books on art and spiritual, even esoteric, thought. In her early years of painting abstractly, she read about Theosophy, tutored by Hans Hofmann and Jock Macdonald, then in later years, she read and studied books by authors such as P. D. Ouspensky who also interested Macdonald. She wrote her thoughts about Ouspensky. Around 1958, through Ouspensky she learnt of Gurdjieff and with others, started a Gurdjieff study group in Oshawa. She was interested enough in Gurdjieff to go to the Gurdjieff Foundation and attend meetings in Toronto and New York. Her diverse readings supplied imagery for her body of work. == Later life ==

Luke continued to paint and support abstract art until her death from ovarian cancer on 1 June 1967. She had created a sizable volume of work and participated in over 80 group exhibitions and solo shows. She had also been made a member of several key Canadian art societies, including the Canadian Group of Painters in 1959 and the Ontario Society of Artists in 1960. == Selected exhibitions ==

• 1947: Riverside Museum, New York City; • 1952: Picture Loan Society, Toronto; == Selected public collections ==

• National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; • The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa; • Museum London, London, Ontario; == Record sale prices ==

At the Joyner auction, Toronto, Luke's The Cloister (1953), estimate $20,000–$30,000 realised a price of $70,800. == References ==