LYNNE MAPP DREXLER (1928-1999)

Lynn Mapp Drexler (1928-1999) began her study of art as a child, painting landscapes by the tender age of eight.
In the late 1950s, after attending the College of William and Mary in Virginia, she immersed herself in Abstract
Expressionism, studying with Hans Hofmann in both his New York and Provincetown schools. Later, she went on
to graduate study at Hunter College in New York City with Robert Motherwell. In the early works Drexler focused on color and composition, eventually reconciling her two interests - landscape and abstraction - in her late work of
the 1980s and 1990s. But it was in the 1950s that she set her foundation - a synthesis of Post-Impressionist
landscape painting and Post-war painterly abstraction. The results are something not familiar to most students of the period and her crisp, colorful brushwork allows the artist to sing with a completely original voice. When she lived in New York she regularly attended concerts at Carnegie Hall where she would make sketches while she was in the audience. Classical music remained an important part of her art. Her vibrant surfaces are both complex and painterly but with a flatness akin to something found in the background of a Gustav Klimt work. Drexler lived the last 16 years of her life on Monhegan Island with her husband, the painter John Hultberg.

Drexler exhibited extensively throughout her life at venues such as Tanager Gallery, Esther Robles Gallery and Westerly Gallery. Her work is part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Monhegan Museum, Farnsworth Museum, Brooklyn Museum and the Queens Museum among others.