Born in Montreal, Quebec, and active in Oshawa, Ontario, where she later died, Luke was mainly self-taught but studied with A.Y. Jackson and Jock Macdonald at the Banff School of Fine Arts (1945); and also summers with Hans Hofmann, Provincetown, Massachusetts (1947-1951). Working in oil and watercolour, her early mountain landscapes were representational. Her later paintings were Abstract Expressionist but lyrical. A member of Painters Eleven, she married Clarence Ewart McLaughlin in 1928. Luke donated her extensive collection of Canadian art to the McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa. She exhibited with the RCA between 1953-1964, the MMFA in 1950, and at the RMG in 1969 and 1977. Her work is in the collections of the LAG. and RMG.