Pat Steir

Pat Steir is an Abstract artist in New York who is known for her huge canvases of dripped paint. Her paintings evoke imagery of Water and Land. So, I was sort of surprised to see that she's an Aries Sun which is in conjunction to the degree of her South Node and Jupiter in Aries. I suppose you could say that Steir's paintings are "Ariesian" in that they are so direct. There's absolutely no distinction between the content, the paint, the philosophy, and the technique. Somehow Steir can drip paint on to a canvas and create exceptional beauty.

My introduction to Steir was through a video about artists. The video was filmed some time in the 90s and Steir was bemoaning the fact that clients were at that time paying more for labor than for inspiration so I guess her works weren't as marketable at that point. I wanted to look at her chart for indicators of ease and not wanting to labor over something just because I was so taken aback by her frankness and lack of ego. For this I would expect a strong Venusian contact and that's definitely here. Steir's Venus is in Gemini conjunct Mars (creativity) to the degree. It's also relating to Pluto in multiple ways. Venus here is out-of-bounds. And it's squaring and is parallel to Pluto which is also out-of-bounds. An extremely artistic, emotionally intimate nature. Her Taurus Moon also disposes to Venus. All this indicates a very tactile nature. You can tell she must really enjoy watching the flow of that paint.

Steir's Venus went Retrograde by Progression around 1997. I wonder if this is about the time that she made the video that I saw.

The Mars and Venus conjunction is also remarkable because these planets together rule both her Nodal Axis and her Aries Sun and Taurus Moon! This perhaps shows how Steir works from such an intuitive and well synthesized vision.

As one would expect Steir's Neptune is strong. It's opposition to Mercury in Pisces forms the Boundary Opposition to a Bowl Shaped Chart. Mercury, as a matter of fact, is a singleton in Water. Pretty interesting because, as I said before, Water and Wateriness is such a strong subject matter in Steir's paintings. Mercury and Neptune have many connections with each other in the same way that Venus and Pluto do in Steir's chart. Mercury disposes to Neptune as it's in Pisces. Also, the two are in Mutual Reception.

Pretty interesting is the Saturn-Pluto square. This can show more of a need for control than I would expect from Steir. Maybe there is a lot of control necessary to create these paintings, I don't know. Making things look easy is the signature of great artists. This pair together certainly gives a lot of drive to work and to have a career. It can also give a great sense of scale and mass which Steir's work certainly has.

Maybe this is too much infomation, but I will also note that Steir was born while Uranus was in Taurus trining Neptune in Virgo. A great signature for Abstraction. Uranus may be in conjunction with Steir's Moon.