Kristen Levesque
Director of Marketing and Public Relations
Seven Congress Square
Portland, Maine 04101
(207) 775-6148 ext. 3223
klevesque@portlandmuseum.org
Release: September 3, 2008
Paintings by Maine artist Lynne Drexler on view at the Portland Museum of Art
(Portland, Maine) Maine artist Lynne Drexler (1928–1999) painted both abstract and representational works alike—with distinctively vibrant colors and bold geometric shapes. Lynne Drexler—Painter, on view December 6, 2008 through March 1, 2009 at the Portland Museum of Art, is the first comprehensive exhibition of her work, including 50 paintings, drawings, photographs, and textiles covering the course of her prolific career.
Drexler received her artistic training at the height of the Abstract Expressionist movement in New York, studying with two of its leading practitioners: Hans Hofmann and Robert Motherwell. From Hofmann she absorbed a fundamental sense for the role of color and from Motherwell an understanding of the importance of draftsmanship and composition. In the early 1960s, Drexler and her husband, the artist John Hultberg, first came to Maine when his dealer Martha Jackson bought them a house on Monhegan Island. For the next decade, the two artists led a rather peripatetic life, moving from New York City to the West Coast, and eventually to Hawaii.
Classical music remained a life-long inspiration for Drexler’s art. When the couple lived in New York, she regularly attended concerts at Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera, where she would make colored crayon sketches from her seat in the audience. Although she began her career as an abstract painter, after settling on Monhegan in 1983, her subjects became more linked to the island landscape through her black-and-white snapshots and her sketches. A new documentary film, accompanying the exhibition, explores in vivid detail her early abstract paintings and her deepening relationship with the island and its year-round residents.
This exhibition was organized by the Monhegan Historical and Cultural Museum Association, Monhegan, Maine. The fully illustrated color catalogue, authored by Portland Museum of Art curator, Susan Danly and published by the Monhegan Museum, is available in the Museum Store.
Museum Information
The Portland Museum of Art, Maine’s largest art museum, showcases fine and decorative arts from the 18th century to the present. From Winslow Homer and Andrew Wyeth to Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet, the Museum features three centuries of art and architecture. The Museum is located at Seven Congress Square in downtown Portland. The Museum is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, and 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday. Memorial Day through Columbus Day, the Museum is open on Monday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Museum admission is $12 for adults, $10 for seniors and students with I.D., $6 for youth ages 13 to 17, and children 12 and under are free. The Museum is free on Friday evenings from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., made possible through the generous support of L.L.Bean and Patricia and Cyrus Hagge. No admission is required to visit the Museum Café and Store. For more information, call (207) 775-6148. Web site: portlandmuseum.org.