As a painter, Edgar has been classified as a "wom[a]n artist who broke the rules,"[4] and her lively, and often large, abstractions typically include a "mass of layered colors—with multiple glazes, opacities, broad areas laid down in washes"[5] while "using dynamic strokes and contrasting tones [that] ... juxtapose[s] color with areas of vacant canvas.
"[6] Her skill and interests built on early art training at Brooklyn College with Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt, Burgoyne Diller, Alfred Russell, Harry Holzman, Martin James,[1] and a degree in art history from Columbia University.
[7] That background laid the groundwork for a life-long appreciation for abstraction, which spanned reviews for Isamu Noguchi, Norman Bluhm, Esteban Vicente and Franz Kline[7] as well as a 1965 review on "The Satisfactions of Robert Motherwell" for ARTnews,[2] in which she explained her thinking about abstraction this way:The almost-star could be a starfish, two ovals suggest anatomy, an egg-shape might be an egg, a blot a cocoon, a rumpled paper bag evokes the many lives it passed through, an almost-arch strains to bend more or straighten out, almost-triangle yearns to be perfect.
[8]Edgar has written and collaborated on many long-form projects on the early history of Abstract Expressionism.
[9] Collaborative work with husband and sculptor Phillip Pavia, also on The Club, is now archived at Emory University's research libraries.