PAT STEIR, Blue 2004

                                                     Pat Steir,  Blue, 2004
                                                     Edition 2/40, 10 color screen-print
                                                     56 1/2 x 43 inches
 
Our focus print for Friday, November 12, 2010 is Blue, 56" x 43" screen print by Pat Steir created in 2004 and published by Pace Prints.  The work is currently on display at Garvey Simon Art Access  as part of the gallerie's Pat Steir exhibition, on display from October 9 to November 27, 2010.  

Pat Steir is an accomplished painter, printmaker and conceptual artist working in New York and Amsterdam.  Blue is a work from her waterfall series, a subject she has been doing to great acclaim since 1985.  The large size of this print gives the viewer a taste of  just how powerful  Steir's prints and paintings can be. Steir's use of white against plush stratified blues creates vivid water imagery.  The viewer can feel the intensity and force of a waterfall and the related spray.   

Although Steir's pour imagery has been paired with the stain and action painters such as Jackson Pollock, Steir 's technique is clearly  different in that she lets nature have a hand in the process. The paint is allowed to flow free form down a vertically positioned canvas.  She employs a similar technique in her printmaking.

2010 has been a banner year for Steir.  Her work has been the subject of several major exhibitions on both coasts.   
  

PAT STEIR October 9 – November 27, 2010

Review: Work by Pat Steir 

by Dan Grossman/Nuvo Newsweekly

 

"August Waterfall" by Pat Steir

4 stars

Garvey|Simon Art Access. According to the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, you can't step into the same river twice. This aphorism might apply to Pat Steir's series of waterfall prints as well; although her approach is similar in all of them, each is unique. Steir often throws paint on her canvases and lets it drip down. While her methods might seem Abstract Expressionist in the Jackson Pollock bent, the result is anything but. The paint is driven downward by gravity, like water, and thus representational in the most literal sense. In her photogravure print "August Waterfall," the paint is white against a black background and it almost seems as if you are viewing a photographic negative. (In fact, the printing process involves a negative transferred onto an etching plate.)The New York-based Steir has had a long and illustrious career as an artist. Her work spans the latter half of the last century to the present and the nine prints on display here are a small sampling of her overall work.One of the works on display, entitled "July 14th 2001," gives you a hint of the enormous range and conceptual depth of this artist.The movement of the while lines against black in this etching is circular, invoking the effect of gravity on a grand scale, perhaps, or the circularity of history appreciated at the easel in one inspired moment.Through Nov. 27; 317-844-7278, www.garvey-simon-art-access.com.