Pat Steir

This artist is currently working out of New York, and has been doing these "waterfall" paintings for a few years now.  Her work touches on ideas that the Chinese have been exploring for centuries - the notion of motion and flux, the element of the void, and how our bodies interact with these.  Her work is typically very large, enabling the viewer to become overwhelmed or perhaps absorbed into each piece.  In many ways this work is anti-establishment. The paintings are evocative and fall into the intuitive realm so unlike the work that is being celebrated in NY and beyond.  Fear of beauty/decor is one characteristic of contemporary work-no doubt why quite a bit is self-consciously "ugly".  I think these paintings move beyond decor- they are introspective, without being self-directed.  In other words, they move beyond themselves, unlike the work of the abstract expressionists, where the work was form for form's sake.  These paintings enable the viewer to transcend themselves, become lost in the beauty of nature, and interact with ambivalent, ungrounded space.  Some may even suggest that work such as this is typically, in a round about way, a discussion of death, the ultimate void.