Luke Lindoe
| Luke Orton Lindoe | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
8 March 1913 Bashaw, Alberta, Canada |
| Died | 4 December 2000 (aged 87) |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Occupation | Clay worker |
| Known for | Plainsman Clays |
Luke Orton Lindoe (8 March 1913 – 4 December 2000) was a Canadian painter, sculptor, potter, businessman and ceramic artist who did most of his work in Alberta, Canada. For long periods he was based in Medicine Hat.
Lindoe gained a deep understanding of the properties of clay, with which he experimented all his life. Although trained in art colleges in Alberta and Ontario, he received no formal qualification. He worked in many different jobs, including mineral prospecting, coal mining, teaching art, producing potting clay and manufacturing ceramic products such as ashtrays. He also filled many commissions for stone or concrete murals on public buildings. During his life he gained a high reputation as a mentor of ceramics artists and for his own oil paintings, sculptures and ceramics.
Luke Orton Lindoe was born on 8 March 1913 in Bashaw, Alberta. For the first sixteen years of his life Lindoe and his mother wandered in western Canada and the United States. He attended twenty-eight schools, but never completed grade ten. In 1933 Lindoe tried to start a farm to the south of Fort St. James in British Columbia. He put up buildings and bought a few animals. After a hopeless struggle that winter, he was forced to abandon the project and sell out.
Lindoe decided that he wanted to study art. He went for help to his father, who was general manager of two mines in Coleman, Alberta. He worked as an underground coal miner while studying painting and then sculpture at the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art, now the Alberta College of Art and Design (1935–40) in Calgary. After four years he had not completed enough hours to qualify for a diploma. He went to Toronto to study sculpture at the Ontario College of Art (OCA) while his funds lasted (1940–41), and there became interested in ceramics. In 1939 he became an Associate Member of the Alberta Society of Artists. Lindoe married Vivian Lamont in 1940, a fellow student at the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art. Their son Allan was born in 1944, and Carroll was born in 1946.
Lindoe moved to Medicine Hat, Alberta in 1941, where he worked for Medicine Hat Potteries. He then became a production foreman at Redcliff Potteries. In 1942 he gained a job as an assistant draftsman in Calgary with a subsidiary of Consolidated Mining and Smelting. In 1942 Lindoe found a job as a geological surveyor for Imperial Oil, and spent three years mapping the Whitemud Formation in Cypress Hills. At the end of this period he was an expert in the local clays. During the winters he was absorbed in painting. Lindoe developed a life-long interest in researching the properties of clay. Virginia Christopher knew Lindoe for many years. She said of his ability to find the best deposits of clay, “He had an intuition about water courses ... He understood the drift of things in the Cypress Hills, he knew where the deposits would end up.”
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