Portrait Emphasis In One-Man Show

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32016, 17 June 1969, Page 9

Portrait Emphasis In One-Man Show

The Christchurch painter, Doris Lusk, is to open a one-man show in the Several Arts Gallery this Friday —her third one-man show in the last three years.

The paintings, both oils and water-colours, have mostly been done in the last 12 months, although a few works which have already been shown in Auckland and Wellington are included. Some are landscapes, but the emphasis is on portraiture in water-colours. It will be her first one-man show in Christchurch for some time. The last two were in the New Vision Gallery in Auckland, and in Dunedin, where she held a retrospectiye show. "I have been doing more portraiture recently, and I am very interested in watercolour portraiture," Miss Lusk said. "I find water-colour as attractive a medium as oil for vibrancy and vigour of presentation. It has fluidity and mobility." Miss Lusk has won a considerable following for her paintings, particularly her water-colours. She has exhibited regularly with the Group for the last 20 years, has been in many national travelling collections, and has won both the Hay water-colour prize and the National Bank watercolour prize. She has paintings in the permanent collections of the public galleries, in the four main centres, in the Hamilton and Timaru art (galleries, in the Hocken Lib-

nty. and in the Queen Elizabeth Arts Council collection. Miss Lusk describes herself as an impressionist in the dictionary sense. “I find it a little misleading to put labels on myself,” she said. "I’m not an abstract painter, but I am very much in sympathy with abstract painting. I admire the way my students (she is a lecturer at the School of Art at Ham) can cope with abstract painting. But I am interested in the wider implications of landscape, and very Interested in portraiture, and I feel there is a lot to be done in the field of realist painting. “I like to feel the excitement of the medium taking over, and this forms the core of my work. This sense of affinity with the medium is quite important. “I have a terrific lot to learn still, and I want to try to move on with my ideas. In spite of the complexities of the modern painting idiom there are a lot of very good things yet to be done in figure work and landscapes," she said.