A Memorial Exhibition for Painter Sandra Lerner

In her paintings, Lerner’s early grounding was in Abstract Expressionism, soon informed by Japanese calligraphy, which she studied with master calligraphers in Japan; an interest and practice of Taoism; and – taking form later in her career – a fascination with astrophysics, quantum mechanics, and outer space.  The lessons of calligraphy – though not practiced in a traditionally Japanese way - made possible a controlled letting-go as well as a spareness that furthered the permissions of Abstract Expressionism. 

 In 1999, critic Cynthia Nadelman wrote: “She [Lerner] calls her show ‘Empty and Full,’ and that dichotomy is really what the works embody.  They are full of knowledgeable painting strategies, yet also refreshingly ‘empty,’ able to breathe.  They are full of color, yet almost neutral, pale or scrim-like in effect.  They are replete with useful and interesting contradictions.”  

Nadelman continues, “Her work has for some time exemplified what we might now call ‘post-regionalism,’ as mixing and borrowing of cultures takes place the world over.  It is a breath of air.”   

Esteemed art critic Donald Kuspit, who wrote frequently about Lerner’s work, in 2015 put her in the category of “lyric expressionism,” as opposed to “epic abstraction,” placing her work alongside artists such as Helen Frankenthaler, Jules Olitski, and Mark Tobey, rather than in the Pollock, deKooning, and Kline camp.  

In late 2019, Lerner’s show at June Kelly titled “Cosmic Sublime” introduced a vigorous, exciting new direction for the artist. Suddenly, activity in outer space lit up her paintings. Black holes or cosmic “wormholes”  were seen glowing in dense outer space.  Every inch of these paintings was covered, with seeming pin pricks of light evoking active night skies, and there seemed to be palpable movement of giant forces in space.  Some were white-hot – or was it cold? – others glowing orange, and cosmic rays connected many of the forms.  

Of this series, Kuspit wrote:  “I suggest that Lerner is a mystic in scientific disguise, or is it a scientist in mystic disguise: her cosmic paintings are scientific and mystical at once. They suggest that scientific knowledge of the cosmos can lead to a mystical experience of it . . . .”    Kuspit goes on to say: “Quantum entanglement is cosmic dialectic: the interacting, interrelated, intertwined globular cosmoses, each with a dazzling white core surrounded by a pulsing yellow ring, in Lerner’s Microcosm series exemplify it. . . Quantum entanglement theory and the wormhole are about cosmic relationships.  I think they are a metaphor for human relationships for Lerner. . . In the last analysis Lerner’s paintings are about the cosmic import of human relationships.”

Lerner herself probably said it best in the foreword to her final lifetime exhibition, titled simply “Entanglement”: “My paintings strive to heighten our awareness of our oneness with the universe.”  

The Sandra Lerner exhibition will be on display at June Kelly Gallery until March 31.   

Cynthia Nadelman
Poet, Art writer, Journalist