Although she has had a polymathic career, Drexler is perhaps best known for her pop art paintings[1] and as the author of the novelization of the film Rocky, under the pseudonym Julia Sorel.

In 1951, Drexler and her husband lived in Hell's Kitchen in New York near Botner's Gymnasium, where a number of female professional wrestlers practiced.

[13] She went on tour around the country, but returned home after becoming upset about racism in the southern states, such as segregated seating and water fountains.

Drexler began making found-object sculptures for display in her home while living in Berkeley, California where her husband was finishing his art degree.

At the urging of David Smith[8] and dealer Ivan Karp, she continued to exhibit after the couple moved to New York City.

One critic called these early works "ridiculous and nutty" sculptures that revealed a "real beauty beneath their I-don't-care attitudes.

Her self-taught process consisted of blowing up images from magazines and newspapers, collaging them onto canvas, and then painting over them in bright, saturated colors.

She and Marjorie Strider were the only two women Pop artists included in this exhibition, which also featured Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Tom Wesselmann.

One critic noted, "Miss Drexler's collage paintings…fly through contemporary life and fantasy with a virtuosic, uninhibited imagination that is refreshingly direct in its frank expression of brutality, desire, pathos and playfulness.

She did not gain the level of recognition of many of her male peers; the major themes in her paintings—violence against women, racism, social alienation—were controversial topics in a genre known for being "cool" and detached.

While the men depicted are most often the abusers, in some paintings, such as Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) and Dangerous Liaison (1963), the dynamic between the male and female subjects is left more indeterminate.

(1966) was inspired by a newspaper photo of Bull Connor, the police chief who instigated the Birmingham race riot of 1963, leading a group of white supremacists.

Although "Death" appears to be a stalker or member of the paparazzi, the photograph after which the painting was made makes clear that the man is actually her bodyguard.

Drexler has listed Franz Kline and Bill and Elaine de Kooning as close friends of her and her husband.

[7] She also had connections to Eva Hesse, George Segal (whom she posed for), Lucas Samaras, Claes Oldenburg, Billy Kluver, Bob Beauchamp, Dodie Müller, Alice Neel, and Joy Harjo.