A second-generation abstract expressionist painter. Lynne Drexler studied with Hans Hoffman and Robert Motherwell in the 1950s before launching her career with her first solo show in 1961 at the reputable Tanager Gallery, An artist-run collective on East 10th Street in New York. Inspired by music and nature she painted with a vibrant palette of swatch-like brushstrokes in condensed detail clusters. During the 1960s, she painted, socialized at the Cedar Tavern, and lived in the Chelsea Hotel and a loft in SoHo before finally retreating to an island off the coast of Maine, where she lived as a hermit — forgotten by the larger art world — while continuing to paint until her death in 1999.
Her second solo show at Berry Campbell, A Painted Aria, features painting and works on paper from the 1970s, with a particular focus on monochromatic pieces inspired by the opera and her personal experience of listieng to the music. Contrasting clusters of organic, arc-shaped lines and dots with more geometrically modeled circles and rectangles. Drexler's canvases are kaleidoscopes of vivid colors and forms.
—Paul Laster, Art & Object
October 1, 2025
