Moon Beam,

2005

In her Moon Paintings, Steir explores the movement of the moon around the sun and the plasticity of time and light. Streaks of yellow paint cascade rhythmically down the canvas, intensifying and vanishing across an imposing bluish-gray field that suggests a cosmic space. Steir’s inspiration for this painterly process comes from eighth- and ninth-century Chinese yipin paintings. Although the Chinese name means “loose-type,” in English the technique is sometimes called “ink-splash” because of its free-form ink patterns that are shaped into evocative abstract compositions. Steir combines careful choreography and chance as she moves around each vertically hung, unstretched canvas, pouring, splashing, throwing, and dripping paint to create images and optical effects that depend upon gravity and the chemistry of the paint.