{"data":{"id":"1279","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":1279,"topgoose_id":769,"tms_id":1279,"display_name":"Pat Steir","sort_name":"Steir Pat","display_date":"1938–2026","begin_date":"1938","end_date":"2026","biography":"\u003cp\u003ePat Steir has defied stylistic categorization\nthroughout her long career, persisting\ninstead in systematically dissecting the\ntraditional techniques of art, including\nmark-making gestures such as brushstrokes\nand paint drips, in much of her work.\nBeginning with her pivotal 1985–86 “Wave”\npaintings, she has used the inherent liquidity\nof wet paint as the basis for several\nseries. Steir’s \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/16230\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eSeptember Evening Waterfall\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cem\u003e\n\u003c/em\u003ebegan with the impulse to create a work\nin which the paintbrush never touched\nthe canvas. She was also responding\nto what she felt were the clichés of Abstract\nExpressionism—as embodied by Jackson\nPollock’s drip paintings—and wanted to\nmake a painting that merged those clichés\nin a fresh way.\n\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eSeptember Evening Waterfall\u003c/em\u003e,\nwhich Steir made in a single day in\nSeptember, she embraced techniques of\npouring, dripping, splashing, and flicking\na single color of white paint, mixing in\nmore or less turpentine to create a\nrange of consistencies and transparencies,\nthe deep blue-black ground discernable\nthrough the thinner rivulets. The liquid\npaint in essence becomes the subject it is\ndepicting as gravity pulls the paint downward,\nechoing the waterfall of the title, and\nmuch is left to chance and accident. As Steir\nsaid: “What I can do is limited by what\nI know. But I’d rather do more than what I\nknow. So chance becomes part of the\nwork and can help form a better painting.\nI rely on chance rather than showing\nhow smart I am. Who cares how smart I am!”\nThe finished painting is a composition\nbalanced between order and chaos, control\nand accident.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500025304","wikidata_id":"Q7144042","created_at":"2017-08-30T15:50:38.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-04-24T01:31:53.719-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/1279/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/1279/exhibitions"}}}}