Continuing the Art of Play
January 11, 2023
Artist: Lynne Drexler
Join Zoom Meeting / Class
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87618016665
“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.”
- LYNNE DREXLER
Lynne Mapp Drexler was born in Newport News, Virginia in 1928. Drexler began her study of art as a child, painting landscapes by the tender age of eight. In the late 1950s, after attending the College of William and Mary in Virginia, she immersed herself in Abstract Expressionism, studying with Hans Hofmann in both his New York and Provincetown schools. From there she went on to graduate study at Hunter College in New York City with Robert Motherwell. In her early work Drexler focused on color and composition, eventually reconciling her two interests — landscape and abstraction — in her late work of the 1980s and ‘90s. But it was in the 1950s that she set her foundation—a synthesis of Post-Impressionist landscape painting and post-war painterly abstraction. The results are something not familiar to most students of the period and her crisp, colorful brushwork allows the artist to sing with a completely original voice.
Warm-up + Project
Let's start our warm-up by making small drawings, playing with different materials. Try using crayons or oil pastels, and turn them on their side to get that wide stroke, seen in Drexler's early crayon drawings on colored paper. Her earlier drawings are light and playful and not as dense as her later paintings.
You may use watercolor, acrylics, and cut paper as well.
Play with the abstract idea of depicting something real or imagined.
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After some experimental play, settle on your materials and subject.
Feel free to use a photograph, an image from a magazine, a tablescape in your working space, or an outside vista.
Drexler's beautiful, colorful, and richly textured painting should be a joyful inspiration to complete some fun pieces!
Early Works on Paper
Untitled 1959 | gouache on paper
Untitled 1960 | crayon on paper
Untitled 1960 | crayon on construction paper
RED WAVE, 1966
Oil on canvas
8 3/4 x 6 7/8 in
FORMAL, 1968
Oil on canvas
9.125 x 7
Heat Nostalgia, 1980
Oil on canvas
36" x 48"
Paperwork #191
Crayon on paper
13 3/4 x 17
WINTER SERENITY, 1976
Oil on canvas
48 x 36 in
Feather Blue
oil on canvas, 1968 49.5 x 44 inches
CELESTIAL DIVISION, 1966
Oil on canvas
40 x 30 in
Pink
oil on canvas, 1968 9.5 x 8.5 inches
Violet Sunlight
oil on canvas 1962
Untitled
oil on canvas
30 by 40 in
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