Locating Alexandra

the long version

This in-depth look at the professional and private life of Alexandra Luke (a.k.a. Margaret McLaughlin) explores the tensions between Luke's multiple, discontinuous selves. As a woman of privilege living in Ontario in the 1940s and '50s, Margaret McLaughlin successfully performed the roles expected of someone in her position: she was a loving mother, a dutiful wife, and a popular hostess of dinner parties and afternoon teas. But as Alexandra Luke, she broke into and inhabited the male-dominated world of art, establishing Painters Eleven (the first abstract painting group in English Canada) and competed successfully both inside and beyond the Canadian art scene. In this first detailed biography of Luke, Margaret Rodgers unravels the ideological, socio-historical, and intertextual threads of this Canadian painter's life. She traces the link between Luke's art and mysticism, and explores the artist's fascination with the Gurdjieff movement. In Locating Alexandra Rodgers shows how Luke managed to build bridges between seemingly disparate worlds.