Wednesday, December 10, 2025

Drip-Based Gravity * Pat Steir


Both method and metaphor, turning the canvas into a theatre of falling colour. Rather than imposing gesture, she releases it: paint poured, flung, allowed to cascade in slow torrents that record time as vividly as hue. The vertical line becomes a living agent — not a stroke but a descent — carrying echoes of ink traditions, weather patterns, and the quiet drama of erosion. What is remarkable is the balance between surrender and orchestration: the work feels at once deliberate and elemental, as if the painter were collaborating with the laws of physics. Through this disciplined letting-go, the surface becomes a field of chance, duration and breath. The resulting images—veils, curtains, storms—propose abstraction as a form of listening: a practice in which colour becomes gravity’s handwriting.