Lorraine Alexander, painter, collage artist, and art advocate, has died at 100

Lorraine Alexander, 100, of Jenkintown, a painter, collage artist, lifelong art advocate, and volunteer, died Thursday, March 7, of congestive heart failure at the Rydal Park and Waters retirement center.

Known for her colorful and “pleasantly unreal” paintings and paper collages, Mrs. Alexander created dozens of works, sold many, and displayed others for decades at shows and exhibitions in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Florida, and elsewhere. She often combined painted landscapes and forms with bits of handmade paper to create scenes from her own travels that featured contrasting colors and distinctive tones and textures.

Inquirer art critic Victoria Donohoe said in 1971 that Mrs. Alexander’s work creates “a sense of tensions expressed by density and the overlap of floating translucent veils.” In describing her 1974 show at the Gross McCleaf Gallery in Center City, Donohoe said, “Color takes flight and runs rampant, being deployed so as to achieve an intense effect that would raise the pitch in any gallery.”

In 2004, Inquirer art critic Edward J. Sozanski said Mrs. Alexander’s works display “a powerful tension between narrative realism.” He said: “They dare you to reconcile their abstract and representative natures, and often you can’t.”

She held noteworthy solo shows at Gross McCleaf and elsewhere, and also exhibited in Atlantic City, Palm Beach, Fla., and the Adirondack Mountains in Northeastern New York. Locally, she showed at the Civic Center Museum, Carol Schwartz Gallery, ArtForms Gallery, Abington Art Center, La Salle University, and other galleries and public venues.

She won a 1971 prize from what is now the Cheltenham Center for the Arts, and one of her works was published in the 1997 history of the Fellowship of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She even made a splash at the 1968 Rittenhouse Square clothesline exhibition when The Inquirer wrote about a visitor whose full-length leg cast was covered with Mrs. Alexander’s “excellent painting” of colorful flowers and insects.

She told listeners in a 2022 talk at Rydal Park and Waters that she often worked on many projects at once and discovered that patience was a requirement. “It takes a long time,” she said of her creative process, “and it’s wonderful.”

Mrs. Alexander studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the 1940s, the Barnes Foundation in the 1960s, and was influenced by Philadelphia artists Violette de Mazia and Ben Wolf. She cofounded the ArtForms artist-run cooperative in Manayunk and served as president at the Cheltenham Art Center.

She enjoyed talking to others about her procedures and techniques, organized informal classes, and opened her home studio in Jenkintown to public tours for the Artists Equity Association in the 1970s. She also designed and oversaw the rebuild of two of her own homes.

“She had a creative spirit,” said her daughter Trish Tieger.

Lorraine Joy Rosenau was born Dec. 19, 1923, at home in Elkins Park. Her father founded Rosenau Bros. clothiers, and she met a young Shirley Temple on a trip to California after her father created what came to be known as the Shirley Temple frock.

Her mother was an expert at needlepoint. Her aunt was an artist, and Mrs. Alexander was also interested in architecture and marketing as a young woman. She graduated from Cheltenham High School in the early 1940s and developed a lifelong love of the Adirondack Mountains on family vacations to New York.

She married Richard Laub, and they had daughter Trish and sons John and Michael. They divorced later. Her former husband and sons died earlier.

She married Ben Alexander in 1959, and they blended their families into one almost seamlessly. They lived in Huntingdon Valley, attended many charitable and art-related social events, and were especially active with the Philadelphia Opera Co., now Opera Philadelphia, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Her husband died in 2019.

Mrs. Alexander liked to travel and play tennis and golf. She swam almost every day for years and enjoyed time with her extended family and dogs.

“She was loving, bright, artistic, and lots of fun,” said her stepdaughter Julie Alexander Steinberg. “She was always there for us and shared her wisdom whether we wanted to hear it or not.”

Fellow artist Yolanda Ward called Mrs. Alexander a “guiding mother,” and Mrs. Alexander’s daughter said: “She was the most positive person I know. She was very spiritual and talked about the miracles that had happened to her. She always appreciated the good in things.”

In addition to her daughter and stepchildren, Mrs. Alexander is survived by grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and other relatives. A brother died earlier.

A celebration of her life is to be held later.

Donations in her name may be made to the Barnes Foundation, 2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, Pa. 19130; and the Woodmere Art Museum, 9201 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia, Pa. 19118.