Career
Lovell-Smith trained at the Christchurch College School of Arts and then taught there from 1924-1945. Her paintings were generally of landscapes, botany and flowers. She always painted in situ, and never painted from notes.
Sometimes she would have several paintings on the go from the same location, each with different weather.
Lovell-Smith"s painting style is characterised by bold design, broad flat areas of colour, and an almost poster-like style. She emphasised basic patterns and shapes, sometimes exaggerating the intensity of colours. unwatered by the tradition of the British landscapists, our debt to her in this matter is great
Lovell-Smith can be understood as part of a movement of New Zealand artists in the 1930s including Olivia Spencer-Bower, Rita Angus and Alfred Cook who art writers A.R.D Fiarburn, James Shelley and ""Conrad" recognised as providing a "new manner" of painting better representing New Zealand and its light.
This included the removal of romantic or golden mist and soft warm colour, and a move towards clear hard light, and displaying sheer, sharp, more linear forms. We must draw rather than paint, even if we are using a brush, or we shall not be perfectly truthful
From 1924 until 1966, Lovell-Smith exhibited at the Canterbury Society of Artist
In 1933, Lovell-Smith was included in the first general exhibition of the New Zealand Society of Artists.
From 1935 she regularly exhibited with The Group (with Cora Wilding, Ngaio Marsh, Evelyn Page and Louise Henderson). In 1940 Lovell-Smith was included in the Centennial Exhibition of New Zealand Artists in Wellington.