Pat Steir: Artist (2020)

Although Pat Steir is best recognized for her mesmerizing dripped, splashed, and poured "waterfall" paintings, which she developed in the late 1980s, she has been at the forefront of American painting for decades, with an artistic practice that spans half a century. In Pat Steir: Artist, Steir herself evokes her childhood in New Jersey, her young adulthood in NY, and her deep friendships and alliances with the most groundbreaking artists and poets of her generation, including her longterm partner, and founder of conceptual art, Sol Lewitt, the legendary composer John Cage, the seminal painter, Agnes Martin, the great poet Anne Waldman, and the groundbreaking French philosopher Sylvere Lotringer. Pat Steir: Artist is a deeply intimate portrait of the artist by novelist/ filmmaker Veronica Gonzalez Peña. Shot over the course of two and a half years, Gonzalez Peña has compiled over 30 hours of deep and personal conversations with Steir. The warmth and closeness the women feel for each other comes across clearly in this highly unique portrait of the great painter. Pat Steir: Artist is a poetic visual exploration on creativity and process, on what it is to live an artistically engaged life. Primarily shot in Steir's home and studio, the film provides an intimate, profound, and revelatory portrait of a groundbreaking female woman artist in her world.