April 10 ❤️ Happy Birthday, Pat.
What I’m trying to do is not tell you about my painting or what I’m feeling.
I want the paint to tell me something.
It’s more like researching, experimenting.
I want the paint to tell me something about the nature of art, about the secret of art, the secret of nature, about the universe that we exist in.
I’m not sure what that something is.
Maybe everyone who makes art has the same feeling.
That’s why I let the paintings make themselves.
-PAT STEIR
(April 10, 1938-March 25, 2026)
Pat in her studio, April 2001. Photo: Theresa Ortolani.
P i c t u r e s of L i g h t
The sun has set. I’m in Greece on a mountain and it’s dusk. Nearby a dog barks, a donkey brays, a woman’s voice is loud, and far away, on a
radio, someone is playing the most beautiful music. I hear wisps of it all blowing by me, between the hills.
I’m watching the sea, and the sounds and perfume of the evening become part of the light and color of the sea. I have watched light all
day. Thin veils of light, on water, on islands and in the air. Light describing and disguising form. Washes of light over light, glistening and
bright. Light over dark, translucent and transparent, soft, and at once,
hard and descriptive, even harsh. I see more colors than one can name, always changing and hard to remember.
Changing light has a profound existential impact. Primal. Words for it deceive. How to describe, light, sound, longing, specifically, eloquently, simply and exactly. I love words, but.... The only way I can GIVE the experience, the mix, to you, of the light, and its impact upon me, is to show you.
TO MAKE A PAINTING. Would this picture of light be what you call an ABSTRACT PAINTING? Or would it be a picture of reality? Do you believe
in a reality that is solely visual? Do you still believe that a picture is worth a thousand words? Do you know at what point an image is not an
image? These questions are my subject.
PAT STEIR • April 10, 1938 - March 25, 2026
With love from Pat’s family, Joost Elffers & Lily Sukoneck-Cohen, and the Pat Steir Studio family, Shaun Acton, Liam van Loenen, and Alexis Myre.
Photos from the family archives.
🟦❤️🟨July 16 & 18 🔴🔸Join us for two screenings of the documentary ‘Pat Steir: Artist,’ directed by Veronica Gonzalez Peña (@rockypointpress ), on the occasion of the exhibition ‘Pat Steir. Mirage 1975’ at our Wooster Street gallery and the release of ‘Pat Steir: Paintings 2018–2025’ from Hauser & Wirth Publishers.
📆 16 – 17 July, 7 pm
📍New York, 18th Street
🔗 Link in @hauserwirth bio to register.
Excerpt from ‘Pat Steir: Artist’. A film by Veronica Gonzalez Peña. With footage by Molly Davies.
#PatSteir
