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Lot Essay
"I am not rich…but I have what I want. I mean, as long as I have food, heat, roof over my head, food for the cat and paint, I am happy. Oh, and Jack Daniels."
—Lynne Drexler
From Virginian royalty to New York bohemian, itinerant American and finally Monhegan Island settler, Lynne Mapp Drexler (1928-1999) followed her eyes and her ears through a life marked by a powerful commitment to painting. Studying with Wolf Kahn, Hans Hofmann and Robert Motherwell upon moving to New York in 1956, Drexler experimented with space, color and process to the admiration of her colleagues: "I'll flunk you out of [Hunter College] before I see you go teach. You're too good a painter" (R. Motherwell, quoted in J. Dorfman, "Symphonies of Color," Art & Antiques). Her marriage to painter John Hultberg in 1962 embedded Drexler deeper within the fabric of the second generation of Abstract Expressionists, showing with Larry Rivers, Alex Katz and other male denizens of the era, earning her first solo show at Tanager Gallery in 1961. Upon retreating to Hultberg's and her summer home in Maine, a gift from gallerist Martha Jackson, Drexler found new inspiration in natural forms encountered during sessions of en plein air painting. Ever the devotee of dramatic colorists like Vincent van Gogh and Henri Matisse, Drexler wove in her own love of opera to create rich tapestries of rhythmic rainbows with the material she both saw and heard.
—Lynne Drexler
From Virginian royalty to New York bohemian, itinerant American and finally Monhegan Island settler, Lynne Mapp Drexler (1928-1999) followed her eyes and her ears through a life marked by a powerful commitment to painting. Studying with Wolf Kahn, Hans Hofmann and Robert Motherwell upon moving to New York in 1956, Drexler experimented with space, color and process to the admiration of her colleagues: "I'll flunk you out of [Hunter College] before I see you go teach. You're too good a painter" (R. Motherwell, quoted in J. Dorfman, "Symphonies of Color," Art & Antiques). Her marriage to painter John Hultberg in 1962 embedded Drexler deeper within the fabric of the second generation of Abstract Expressionists, showing with Larry Rivers, Alex Katz and other male denizens of the era, earning her first solo show at Tanager Gallery in 1961. Upon retreating to Hultberg's and her summer home in Maine, a gift from gallerist Martha Jackson, Drexler found new inspiration in natural forms encountered during sessions of en plein air painting. Ever the devotee of dramatic colorists like Vincent van Gogh and Henri Matisse, Drexler wove in her own love of opera to create rich tapestries of rhythmic rainbows with the material she both saw and heard.