Pat Steir was born on 1940 and studied graphic art at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York. Known for her delicately balanced interplay between the force of gravity and the properties of paint, her skilled fluctuation between deliberate control and chance occurrence, Steir’s compositions possess a radiant and mystical beauty. Her work is inspired by the colors of the Renaissance, the tenets of Abstract Expressionism, and Chinese landscape paintings from the Tang & Song Dynasty. She makes her marks by flinging, pouring, and dripping paint. Images of waterfalls resulted naturally from this approach, and she has also worked from time to time with images that evoke the night sky.

Her work is in many collections such as the MoMA New York, NY, The Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, NY, The Whitney Museum of American Art New York, NY, The Tate Museum in London, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York , NY, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and Musée d'Art Contemporain, Lyon, France, to name a few.