Pat Steir catalog

“I want art to affect the viewer and for the viewer to take it away to enhance, embrace, and elevate life. ” – Pat Steir

From an early age, Pat Steir knew she would become a poet or a painter. Her father teased her, ‘become a poet’, he said, ‘you’ll make more money.’ But when we look at her paintings, it’s clear she didn’t have to choose. Today, Pat Steir is at the forefront of American Art. This particular painting, “Wind, Water, and Stone: 5 A.M.” is an expansive, unrestrained work full of drips and splatters. But to reduce it to, or simply label it as ‘Abstract Expressionism’ is to miss much of the point.

She’d say, “I don’t struggle with painting the way an Abstract Expressionist would. They let the painting fight back. I let it ‘become’ and ‘be’.”

“Wind, Water, and Stone: 5 A.M.” is a testament to gestural kinetic fluidity when an artist steps aside and lets circumstance and chance take over. Here, even a hatch-dashed reddish form thrown across its expanse suggests stone is as vulnerable to the laws of time and impermanence as water or air.

The painting is not a waterfall or wave for which the artist is so well-known. But it suggests it might be a hidden detail of either or both; a momentary passage of water from one state to the next, a moment frozen on a flat surface with paint.

Her work speaks to Taoist/Buddhist sensitivities and is likely to be explained in language full of contradictions and riddles. It is empty, and whole, and part of something all at once. It is as much John Cage’s ideas about chance as an act to control what she does not how to.

This is an artist that makes sense of hidden things. “Wind, Water, and Stone: 5 A.M.” is that gift to us. She would be happy to let Agnes Martin speak on behalf of it when her good friend told her, “My work is awe.

Yours is too.”

Pat Steir (b. 1940) Wind, Water, and Stone: 5 AM Signed verso, “PS ‘97” oil on canvas 108 x 108 in.

1997 Provenance: Cheim & Read, New York Private Collection, Florida (acquired from the above) Exhibited: Selby Gallery, Sarasota FL, Dazzling Water, Dazzling Light: Paintings by Pat Steir, 1/21/00-2/26/00 Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown IH, Dazzling Water, Dazzling Light: Paintings by Pat Steir, 3/30/00-4/30/00 Des Moines Art Center, Des Moine, IA, Dazzling Water, Dazzling Light: Paintings by Pat Steir, 6/3/00-8/6/00 Lyman Allyn Museum of Art at Connecticut College, New London, CT, Dazzling Water, Dazzling Light: Paintings by Pat Steir, 8/28/00-10/16/00 Kennesaw State University, GA, Dazzling Water, Dazzling Light: Paintings by Pat Steir, 11/2/00-12/15/00 Boise Art Museum, Boise ID, Pat Steir, 12/6/03-2/22/04 Ochi Fine Art, Ketchum, ID, Pat Steir, 3/5/04-12/1/04

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