LYNNE MAPP DREXLER / this is now

Lynne Mapp Drexler (1928–1999, Newport News, Virginia) was an Abstract Expressionist painter and a student of both Hans Hofmann and Robert Motherwell. She developed a distinctive stylistic idiom marked by vibrantly contrasting hues applied in swatch-like patches with a pointillist dynamism. Drexler initially studied drama at the Richmond Professional Institute, graduating in 1949, before turning to visual art through coursework at the College of William & Mary. Encouraged by mentors, she moved to New York in 1956 to study with Hofmann and later attended Hunter College under Motherwell, who inspired her belief that she could sustain a life as an artist.

By the late 1950s, Drexler began exhibiting her work, and by 1959 she had developed her signature brushwork, where dense clusters of strokes allowed color to dominate over geometry. She became an active presence in the Greenwich Village art scene, frequenting the Cedar Tavern and the 8th Street Artist Club, and held her first solo exhibition at the Tanager Gallery in 1961. In the early 1960s, Drexler was introduced to Monhegan Island, Maine, a place that would profoundly shape her life and work. Over time, her paintings grew increasingly representational, incorporating landscapes, still lifes, and symbolic imagery drawn from her coastal surroundings. Drexler lived and worked between New York and Maine until her death in 1999.