Pat Steir (b. 1938, Newark, New Jersey) is an American painter and printmaker known for her large-scale abstract canvases and influential “Waterfall” paintings. Her practice emerged from early engagements with conceptual art and minimalism, evolving into a distinctive poured-paint technique in which gravity and chance play central roles in the making of the image. Steir studied at Boston University and Pratt Institute, and by the 1960s was exhibiting in major museums, becoming part of the first generation of women artists to gain significant visibility in the New York art scene.
Over a career spanning more than five decades, Steir has created paintings, prints, and wall-sized installations that reference East Asian landscape traditions, Western abstraction, and philosophies of time and perception. She has taught at institutions including Parsons School of Design, Princeton University, and CalArts, and has been a founding board member of key artist-run and feminist platforms such as Printed Matter and the journal Heresies. Today, her work is held in major museum collections worldwide and she is widely recognized as a major innovator in contemporary painting.