LYNNE MAPP DREXLER

"I've always felt deeply within myself that I was a damn good artist, though the world didn't recognize me as such. I wasn't about to play their game."

An Abstract Expressionist and student of both Hans Hofmann and Robert Motherwell, Lynne Drexler developed a distinctive stylistic idiom marked by vibrantly contrasting hues applied in swatch-like patches with a Pointillist dynamism. Born in 1928 near Newport News, Virginia, Drexler initially studied drama at the Richmond Professional Institute, graduating in 1949. After an illness, she took art courses at the College of William & Mary and, encouraged by several mentors, moved to New York in 1956 to study with Hans Hofmann. She later studied at Hunter College under Robert Motherwell, who inspired her to believe she could make a living as an artist.

Drexler began exhibiting her work in the late 1950s, and by 1959, she had developed her signature brushwork—swatch-like strokes in dense clusters that allow color, rather than geometry, to dominate. She became an active part of the dynamic art scene in Greenwich Village, frequenting the Cedar Tavern and the 8th Street Artist Club. In 1961, she had her first solo exhibition at the Tanager Gallery in New York, whose founding members included Lois Dodd, Alex Katz, and Philip Pearlstein.

In 1962, at a Halloween dance at “The Club,” Drexler met her future husband, John Hultberg. They were married that year and honeymooned in Maine, where Hultberg had a house on Monhegan Island—an introduction to a place that would deeply influence Drexler’s life and art. That summer, she began incorporating the shapes and colors of Monhegan into her paintings, continuing to translate her memories of Maine into her work throughout the winter in her New York studio.

After her exhibition at Tanager, Drexler exhibited sporadically as trends shifted toward Pop Art, and she felt increasingly alienated from the New York art scene. In the early 1970s, she and Hultberg purchased the Monhegan house, and by the early 1980s, Drexler was living on the island full-time after Hultberg’s passing. During the last two decades of her life, Drexler’s work became more representational, incorporating elements of her coastal surroundings, still lifes, and a series of paintings with dolls and masks. In her later years, Drexler gained more local recognition in New York, with several solo shows held in Maine galleries. She passed away from cancer in 1999.