25 Facts About Doris Lusk

Doris More Lusk was a New Zealand painter, potter, art teacher, and university lecturer.

Doris Lusk was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, on 5 May 1916.

Doris Lusk was the daughter of Alice Mary, and Thomas Younger Lusk, a draughtsman and architect, and had two older siblings, Marion and Paxton.

Doris Lusk completed one more year at Arthur Street Primary School before attending Otago Girl's High School in 1930.

In 1933, Doris Lusk left high school before she had matriculated, and enrolled in the Dunedin School of Art.

Doris Lusk enrolled against her father's wishes and later noted there had been, "one hell of a row," about her decision.

Doris Lusk was taught by JD Charlton Edgar and took life classes under Russell Clark in his studio.

In December 1942 Doris Lusk married Dermot Holland, and in 1943 the couple moved to Christchurch.

Doris Lusk quickly became affiliated with The Group, an association of artists based in Christchurch with ties to artists throughout New Zealand.

Doris Lusk took this landscape as her main subject for the next five years.

In 1979, two years before she ceased teaching at the art school, Doris Lusk began a series of works based on buildings in Christchurch's central city that were being demolished in order to build office buildings and apartment blocks.

Doris Lusk worked from photographs that she took and collaged with images culled from newspapers, and translated these into paintings made with watercolour, acrylic and coloured pencil.

Doris Lusk continued to develop this style through the 1940s and fifties with paintings like Tahananui, Power House at Tuai and Botanical Gardens, Hawera.

For more than five decades, Doris Lusk consistently pursued this preoccupation, using different techniques and employing different media.

From being the result of random excursions, Doris Lusk's paintings were directed explorations, not just of the relationship between the structures and the land around them, but of the buildings themselves, and aspects of the juxtapositions of interior and exterior, exposure and concealment, surface and depth.

Doris Lusk was unable to study overseas until 1974, and her art was fitted into her personal life, so that visits to friends at Tuai and family holidays became her opportunity for painting.

Doris Lusk mainly painted close friends, family and colleagues, along with a small number of commissions and several works painted in the 1970s based on images from newspapers.

Doris Lusk was introduced to modelling with clay by Field while at art school, which ignited her interest in the medium.

Doris Lusk made her ceramics largely under her married name, Doris Holland, most of it in earthenware.

Doris Lusk was president of the Canterbury Potters' Association from 1970 to 1972.

Doris Lusk was appointed a tutor at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts in 1966 and was made a permanent staff member within the following 18 months.

Doris Lusk continued to teach at the School until 1981.

Doris Lusk exhibited mainly with The Group in Christchurch in the 1940s and 1950s.

The first retrospective exhibition of Doris Lusk's work was held at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 1966.

Examples of Doris Lusk's work are held by most New Zealand public art galleries.