Pat Steir: Before the Rain
Locks Gallery, Philadelphia
October 3 – November 15, 2025
Winter Daylight, 2021-22
Oil on canvas, 108 x 108 inches
© Pat Steir, courtesy Locks Gallery
Locks Gallery presents Before the Rain, an exhibition of new and recent paintings by Pat Steir. This marks the artist’s eighth solo show with the Locks Gallery.
A monumental figure in contemporary painting, Pat Steir developed her distinctive style of Waterfall paintings in the 1980s, embedding deep, lyrical meaning in the free expression of paint. Surrendering herself to chance and “non-intention”, Steir’s process of dripping, pouring, and throwing paint marked a defining moment in her exploration of materiality and of the artist’s role in creation, opening a way for her continued mastery of this dance between paint, gravity, gesture and ground.
Steir’s new works find her building upon and refining these guiding variables. Against a darkened ground, as seen in Many Colors II (Blue) (2022) and Winter Daylight (2021-22), dripping multi-colored brushstrokes act as prisms within the encompassing layers of poured paint while precise white lines recall her underlying interest in grids and matrices.
Monday Circus, 2022-23
Oil on canvas, 108 x 72 inches
© Pat Steir, courtesy Locks Gallery
In tandem with the darkened palette and hypnotic allure of these paintings, Steir’s nomenclature also entwines itself with a certain poetics, inspiring viewers not just to look but to ruminate. The artist has said, “[T]he poetry of the title is part of the picture for me. It’s absolutely the same thing.” Take Monday Circus (2022-23), where swinging strokes of chartreuse, maroon, and orange conjure a myriad of evocations from playful to melancholic. In her succinct yet nuanced phrases, such as One Green One (2025), Pat Steir incorporates rhythm in the language of her titles that helps instill the image in the “mind’s eye.”
Artist Pat Steir
Pat Steir (b. 1938) was born in Newark, New Jersey and currently lives and works in New York.
Throughout her renowned career, she has been the focus of numerous solo museum exhibitions and site-specific installations.
Pat Steir was the recipient of a Guggenheim Artist’s Fellowship (1981), a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist’s Grant (1973), an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Art from Pratt Institute (1991) and a Distinguished Alumni Award from Boston University (2001).
She is a founding board member of Printed Matter, Inc. in New York and the landmark feminist journal, ‘Heresies’.
Her work is represented in major collections, including: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; The Museum of Modern Art, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY; The Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts, CA; de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Tate Gallery, London.
LOCKS GALLERY
600 Washington Square South, Philadelphia, PA 19106
