ARTIST STATEMENT
“I’ve always felt deeply within my soul that I was a damn good artist, though the world didn’t recognize me as such.”
About the artist
Lynne Drexler (1928–1999) was an American painter associated with the second generation of Abstract Expressionism. Born in Newport News, Virginia, she moved to New York in 1955, where she studied with Hans Hofmann in New York and Provincetown and with Robert Motherwell at Hunter College. Combining Hofmann’s “push and pull” theory of color with Motherwell’s emphasis on composition, Drexler developed a distinctive visual language built from densely layered, mosaic-like passages of vibrant color. Classical music was central to Drexler’s process. She frequently attended concerts and operas with a sketchbook, translating musical rhythm, harmony, and orchestration into colored studies that later informed her paintings. Her compositions often described as “painted music” merge the gestural energy of Abstract Expressionism with elements of Impressionism, Fauvism, and Pointillism. Short, interlocking brushstrokes move across the surface like musical notes, creating complex fields that appear simultaneously structured and improvisational.
“My work was very organic; very closely related to landscape and still life.”
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
White Cube, London and Hong Kong; Portland Museum of Art; Monhegan Museum; Berry Campbell, New York; Mnuchin Gallery, New York; Chrysler Museum of Art, Virginia
Available artworks
Exhibitions
“Making art might not be about satisfying somebody else’s idea of art, but it had to satisfy your own inner soul.”
