Luella Gubrud Buros was an artist of national repute. She began painting in 1931 after her interest in art was aroused by her husband and friends who admired and appreciated her apartment furnishings and clothing of her own making.
Luella began her art training at Columbia University art school while her husband, Oscar, was a student there. She attended Rutgers University art school while her husband taught there and then followed Oscar to Ohio State University and enrolled in their art school. Luella was an honor student in all art schools she attended.
The youngest of six children, Luella grew up on a pioneer farm in North Dakota. Her childhood impressions of prairie life are reflected in many of her paintings, such as "Haying" and "North Dakota Farm."
Being without a car for 20 years, Luella would walk around the New Brunswick and Highland Park areas where she lived. These areas provided the subject material for many of her landscape and street scenes, including "New Brunswick Street in Winter" and "An Old House." She portrayed her own environment very graphically and particularly liked to paint Johnson Park in midwinter. Luella considered herself a "realistic painter at heart" and while she thought the new trend of abstract art and expressionism of that era was very good art, she felt it to be too far removed for her.
Luella's artworks have been displayed at various art museums throughout the United States. Some of her works are still on display. Exhibitions that displayed Luella's oil and watercolor paintings include: Art Institute of Chicago, Carnegie Institute, City Art Museum of St. Louis, Columbus Gallery of Fine Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, Golden Gate International Exhibition of Watercolors in San Francisco, International Exhibition of Watercolors of Art Institute in Chicago, Joselyn Memorial Art Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, Milwaukee Art Institute, Montclair Art Museum in Montclair, NJ, National Academy of Design, New Jersey State Museum, Newark Museum, Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Toledo Museum, and the Stedlijke Museum in Amsterdam, Holland.
In 1935 Luella received her first prize--the Grant Wood Award--from the Ohio State College Gallery of Fine Arts. In 1953, her oil painting "Coastal Landscape" depicting an Atlantic landscape won the National Association of Women Artists' Medal of Honor at their 61st annual exhibition in New York City. Another oil painting titled "Respite" received an honorable mention at the Newark Art Club exhibition in 1953. Luella was included in the publication "Who's Who in American Art" along with a list of her numerous awards and honors, memberships, and exhibits.
In addition to painting, Luella liked to garden and do carpentry work making furniture such as cabinets, chairs, tables, bookcases, and backyard chairs. When Oscar K. Buros began publication of the Mental Measurements Yearbook, Luella used her artistic skills in typographically designing all the books and advertising pamphlets by Gryphon Press (their own publishing company). Soon her oil and watercolor painting became secondary to the publication and promotion of her husband's books.
Photography became a new hobby for Luella while she was with her husband in Africa in 1956-57. Together Oscar and Luella accumulated numerous African artifacts including wood carvings, masks, native drums, and other items. She took over 2,000 color slides that graphically record their dark continent adventures. In 1959 Luella began lecturing on the subject of their African trips.
In 1964 Luella, artist, publisher, world traveler, and lecturer was selected by Fairleigh Dickinson University Florham-Madison campus magazine University Woman as one of 130 outstanding New Jersey women.
