Lili Maglione of Cold Spring Harbor blazing her own trail at 95

Growing up in Manhasset, Lili Maglione yearned to sketch and paint the stylish clothing worn by fashionable women in 1940s New York City. But her father, an Italian immigrant and a hard-working landscaper, opposed his daughter’s early interest in art.

“I was very interested in fashion as a teenager. I wanted to be a fashion artist and have a career that way,” said Maglione, of Cold Spring Harbor. “But my parents wanted me to get married and have children.”

As a young woman, Maglione said she refused to let her family’s expectations hold her back, embarking on an award-winning career that has spanned more than seven decades. Now 95, she continues to blaze her own trail. The nonagenarian is at work on her latest series, “Unwoven,” inspired by what she sees as the divisions that have emerged in this country since the pandemic. She hopes to exhibit it once it’s completed.

“I’m very excited about what I’m doing right now,” she said.

TRAPHAGEN SCHOOL OF FASHION

Determined to follow her dreams, Maglione said she worked her way through the now-defunct Traphagen School of Fashion in Manhattan, teaching ballroom dance classes while earning an associate’s degree in fashion art in the early 1950s. After graduation, she said she headed up the fashion art offices for two Manhattan-based pattern companies and then completed her studies at the Art Students League, also in Manhattan. In 1957, at 28, she said she married Bernhart Rumphorst, an architect, and they soon welcomed two children. While raising a family, she launched a career in fine art.

Maglione’s award-winning work — which over the years has transitioned from portraits to still lifes to flowers, landscapes and abstract art — has been exhibited at numerous universities and museums, including The Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill and Fairfield University in Connecticut. Her works have also been shown in galleries including the Amsterdam Whitney and Pen + Brush, both in Manhattan, she said.

Several of her compositions have been placed in the corporate art collections of Coca-Cola and Weight Watchers and in the private spaces of celebrities such as the late Hollywood actress Elizabeth Taylor, Maglione said.

“A lot of artists can paint a vase of flowers or a pile of grapes. But when you can incorporate a lot of elements together, that’s when the painting gets interesting, and she is able to do that,” said Thomas Kellaway, founder, editor and publisher of American Art Review magazine, based in Stratham, New Hampshire. “She has the technical ability to paint things that are precise. The other thing is that most artists are not great at understanding the lighting in their paintings, but she understands how to reflect light behind, in front and on top of an object.”

CHANGING HER FOCUS

During the early days of her career, Maglione said she was heavily influenced by the work of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, a French artist who led the development of the Impressionist style, and focused on creating oil paintings of fashionable women, children and flowers.

But after she began experiencing breathing difficulties from the fumes of oil paint, Maglione switched to acrylic in the mid-1970s. As she shifted mediums, she said she also transitioned from representational art to abstract art, emphasizing form, color and lines without representing specific objects or scenes.

“Abstraction is very free and exciting,” said the grandmother of seven. “You could almost do what your expression wishes, what comes to your mind, your feelings and emotions and all of that comes into play.”

Maglione said her work takes shape in her home studio, where she paints sitting, standing or lying on the floor as classical music of Italian composer Giacomo Puccini and German composer Wilhelm Richard Wagner plays in the background.

“I always paint by natural light, alone, without distractions,” said Maglione, whose work lines several walls in the home she shares with her son and daughter-in-law. “I sketch directly with paint and brush on stretched canvas using a limited palette and apply paint in layers.”

Inspiration also comes when she is away from her studio. Sometimes an idea is ignited by what she has observed or imagined, she said. And on occasion, even a dream can spark her motivation to pick up a paintbrush.

The end result, she said, should be uplifting for the viewer and for her artwork to “flow like music or poetry. . . . The piece should make the world better somehow or in some way,” she said.

In addition to making visual art, Maglione said she has also composed poetry, contributing verses to the National Library of Poetry in Owings Mills, Maryland, the largest public collection of modern poetry in the world.

By the early 1980s, Maglione said her work had evolved again. Her previous abstract compositions had featured layers of different-colored paints, but she began a new series, titled “Woven,” in which she used acrylic paint to cover the canvas in repetitive intricate swirls and meandering lines.

Looking back to that era, the artist said she chose the title to represent a world that she described as peaceful. “This was after the turbulent 1960s and ’70s. We [society] were content and prospering. We were woven,” she said. “It was a good time to look back.”

As she continued creating in her studio during the late 1980s and ‘90s, she said she also served as the director of decorative affairs at Harbor Acres at Sands Point, a property owners’ association, and at Sands Point Preserve; and as an art consultant for the Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn Harbor.

Also in the ‘90s, Maglione, aiming to strengthen her sketching skills, said she traveled to Cadenabbia, Italy. There, she studied figure drawing and learned the finer points of capturing the essence of the human body — its muscles, texture, postures and movement.

Graeme Smith, 65, who owns several of Maglione’s works, including a still life and an abstract of flowers, said her art, especially her rendition of peonies, fits his “sensibilities and is relaxing and calming to look at.”

He said that Maglione’s art stands out because she has “traversed a wide range of painting and styles and does each one magnificently. . . . That she is in her 90s and still has inspiration and ideas to create these abstracts is exceptional.”

Over the years, Maglione has been recognized by the American Artists Professional League in Manhattan, the Manhattan Arts International and The National Arts Club, also in Manhattan.

Despite her numerous professional achievements and awards, she said she is most proud of her two children and grandchildren.

Her son, Douglas Horst, 61, a retail and residential designer and sculptor, and her daughter, Catherine Boyd, 66, a special education teacher from Haymarket, Virginia, said they owe their creative upbringing to their mother and take great pride in her dedication to her artwork and creativity. They fondly recalled their mother giving them art lessons as children, which they said have inspired their lifelong love of the arts.

’UNWOVEN’ FOR TURBULENT TIMES

As Maglione sat among a few of her paintings on a May afternoon, she exhorted emerging artists to “follow their dreams,” as she did. “During art school, on many days, I had to choose between buying art supplies and lunch,” she recalled. “Art supplies always won out.”

She continues work on her latest composition, which she said is a “sister-series” to her 1980s work “Woven.”

The new work, titled “Unwoven,” is a black-and-white pen-and-ink abstract that depicts untangled loose strands or threads that appear to have been pulled apart. She said the designs are created using a fine felt-tip pen and sometimes a chisel-tip Sharpie marker that makes broad strokes on the canvas.

Reflecting on the name of her newest work, she said: “It’s not a peaceful time in the world now, and there is much dissension and discord. We are not woven together.”

She recently completed her 17th canvas in the series. And she’s likely not done yet.

“ ‘Unwoven’ may be ongoing, though the basic elements will be a little different,” she said. Then she paused and said, “Or it may go in a different direction.”

Looking ahead, Maglione said she has no plans to retire. Her passion to create, she said, is “a drive that cannot be denied.”