Advertisement
HATHOR’S TRIBE: Who is your muse, who inspires you?
STEINER: I wouldn’t say that I have a muse per se, though I do sometimes feel presences or energies with me when I work…subtle flows of color, light, sound and emotion that feel like they are imprinted with the resonances of distant places and times and people. I might call them muses, or collections of information, or echoes in time that leave behind impressions in my consciousness and in my work. They are intangible, but they feel very clear and present at times.
I think I’d be accurate in saying, however, that the natural world, the water, the sky, the land, is really my primary muse. Not any literal or particular landscape—I don’t consider myself a landscape painter, though I incorporate elements of landscape into my work—but the deeper essence of the natural world, the breakdown of its parts, its internal geometry. I grew up in rural northern California, very close to nature, and as a kid my love for nature was so deep that it was like a longing, almost painful. My work, I think, grows out of that; on some level, it’s an effort to relieve that longing, to get inside of nature, to engage with it, to merge with it. Of course, within this desire, there is always the deeper desire to know my own nature, to experience my own being in a pure, unencumbered way. Painting allows me to do that; it relieves me of the everyday suffering of the mind, and it fulfills my desire to get inside of what is dynamic and beautiful and meaningful about being alive.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: Are you a visual artist, writer, musician or film maker?
STEINER: I’m a visual artist—a painter. That’s what I do, and my identity and career and life are focused on that goal. I’m also a singer, and I’m something of a writer and poet. I worked as a writer for a number of years, and got my graduate degree in creative writing. The truth is, though, I’ve found that I’m much happier, more adept, and more comfortable dwelling in the mind of the painter, because it is non-linear, pre-linguistic, and simultaneous (the painter can see all of her creation at one time). I am also not particularly interested in telling stories, which, as you can imagine, can be problematic for a writer. Even as a painter, I avoid narrative in my work, preferring to communicate in more abstract visual language that, at least to me, feels truer, closer to the bone. Painting allows me to more directly express the quiet, subtle moments in life when time slows down, when stories stop…these are the moments that interest me most. When all is stillness, and there is nothing left but feeling, impulse, movement, harmony, tension, timelessness, expansion, ecstasy, beauty, emptiness.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: What artists have influenced your work?
STEINER: Many movements and artists influence my work, though I usually see them first in my paintings, rather than planning or deciding what they will be. Among my influences, I would count the art nouveau movement, medieval Catholic art (illuminations, stained glass), textiles from all over the world (India, Japan, Africa, Europe), origami and Japanese graphic design, Chinese calligraphy and landscapes, botanical drawings, Victorian fashion, aboriginal art (which I discovered only very recently, after being told my work was reminiscent of it), modern/minimalist design, Tibetan Buddhist painting, Rococo, folk and religious art from all over the world (Mexico, Eastern Europe, India, Bali). I am also an admirer of many contemporary painters: Julie Heffernan and Darren Waterston are current favorites, as are Clare Rojas, Rex Ray, Margaret Kilgallen and the “Mission School” painters from my long-time home of San Francisco. Also: Frida Kahlo, Kiki Smith, Yoko Ono, Hokusai, Van Gogh. I grew up worshipping the work of Georgia O’Keefe and as a teenager used to copy her paintings in pencil and watercolor in my sketchbooks; recently, I was looking through some of her work and was struck by how deeply her work had imprinted in my artistic sensibilities, affinities and tastes. And last but certainly not least, I am influenced by my husband, Aaron Castro, who is a powerfully inspiring artist and partner and friend.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: At what age did you have an interest in art, and when did you first realize you would be an artist?
STEINER: I feel like I knew from the time I was a small child that I was an artist, but then, kids are artists naturally, and they all know it, don’t they? But…to pinpoint a specific moment, I would say it was probably on a family trip to Washington D.C., when I was eleven or twelve. My mom and I went to the Smithsonian Art Museum and spent hours there looking at the paintings…and I was just in a kind of ecstatic state, totally blissed out. Afterward, riding with my family in a train car, I declared with conviction that I was going to be an artist when I grew up. I remember my mother reacting positively, being very excited and sweet about it. Of course, there have been many instances since then in which I’ve decided/realized anew that I am an artist—in high school, in college, in my late twenties. In a way, I reaffirm my choice to be an artist every day when I show up to work in my studio.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: Do you plan out your work before you do it, or does it evolve organically?
STEINER: Very rarely do I plan my work. I tend to work on impulse, to feel the art in my body first…in my solar plexus or throat or chest…and I allow it to gestate, to percolate in my consciousness. I usually work on a large number of pieces at a time—sometimes as many as 20 or 30—and I move around from piece to piece, depending on what is calling me. My process reminds me a little of the way the surfers here in Santa Cruz go out to the beach and sit in their trucks and study the waves for long periods of time. Then, something clicks, and they go into the water. That’s kind of what I do. I sit with the paintings—even if they’re just blank canvases—till something clicks, then I go into the water.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: Is there a mental process? Do you have a question to ask or answer?
STEINER: I feel like in my creative process there’s a nexus point—a hub of consciousness where the mental, emotional, physical and ethereal meet…and the inspiration tends to move from the ethereal, through that hub, down the arms, through the hands and paintbrush, onto the canvas. Within that mysterious process, the conceptual or mental is somehow present—I have general ideas and themes that play out, over and over—for example, I have a very real concern for the state of the Earth; I also have a deep craving to connect with the anonymous women artisans who came before me, who gathered together in sewing circles, and worked so intimately with textile design and pattern and ornamentation. But ideas, issues, themes, they never really come first. Like I don’t sit down in my studio and think “I’m going to connect with my ancestors today” or “I’m going to express my concern over the fact that we’re abusing the planet.” Not because I don’t want to sometimes, but because it just doesn’t seem to work for me; it’s putting the cart before the horse. I think there are a lot of artists out there who are really good at starting from the conceptual, and I truly admire them and sometimes envy them. For me, I seem to have to surrender to approaching my work as a process of studying and engaging and playing with the basic building blocks of the physical world…color, form, material, etc. I think the concepts are backdrops to the creative process, but they are not the process itself; it’s almost as if they’re there to be transcended or forgotten. I think I really do forget them—my mind goes out the window when I paint—and yet when I look at finished bodies of work, I’m amazed that the concepts have managed to stay, to continue to be a relevant and grounding force in the work.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: If you have had formal training, do you feel your educational process hindered your artistic expression in anyway?
STEINER: Yes, I’d say my formal training—limited as it was—was something of a hindrance, at least in the short-term. When I started my undergrad studies at Mills College in the early nineties, I did so with the intention to be an art major. I took a handful of art classes, felt totally traumatized and baffled and inadequate, and changed my major. After that, it took me a good seven years until I began painting with any kind of discipline or intention again. The upshot was that when I did come back to painting, it was with a kind of fire and directedness that I had not known before. Somehow, my voice had found me, not through painting, but through life experience. So, in the long term, I’m grateful for that experience, because it strengthened my will, conviction and vision. It tested my resolve, which is important for an artist.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: Do you use the creative process to express your internal conflicts or to purge yourself of emotions?
STEINER: I’d say so, yes, not really consciously, but more alchemically, in an experiential way. Art is a discipline; it’s a devotional practice and a commitment. There’s something about showing up in the studio, rain or shine, whatever’s happening in my life, that is just profoundly comforting. I can bring the deepest sorrows of my life to the table, and the art will eventually transmute them. The flip-side of that is that I can’t hide from my sorrows, my conflicts, my shadow, because the creative process doesn’t allow lying or hiding. It’s constantly cleaning house on the psyche, both personally, and for the collective, the ancestors, the rocks and trees and all the rest. The creative process has a graceful way of touching the deepest, most painful wounds. It brings existential comfort, somehow speaks to those unanswerable, fundamental questions about the nature of reality that can’t ever really be answered.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: If so, do you feel that art can be a kind of therapy?
STEINER: Without question; I think art is inherently therapeutic, and there’s no way around that…it’s a roto-rooter for the soul. Of course, its value as therapy and its aesthetic value are not necessarily related. The merit of art therapy is in its healing or cathartic effect on the individual. Fine art has to stand on different criteria, on its own artistic merit.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: What is your opinion about the current art movements which focus on dark imagery?
STEINER: That’s a very interesting question, and one that I’ve actually thought about a lot, but which I haven’t really been able to satisfactorily answer. Certainly, like all expression, it’s by nature a reflection of the inner worlds of the people expressing it…and let’s face it, to be alive on planet Earth today means confronting on some level the absurd dream of the apocalypse that humanity is very dangerously working with now. So…from that perspective, it should be no surprise that dark imagery is showing up in art these days. I don’t know…I think about the R. Crumb model…that art can be a kind of exorcism of internal demons. I agree with this idea and know from first-hand experience that it’s true. And yet, there’s a place where, at least from my perspective, very dark imagery in art has become too fashionable for its own good, and can be (though it certainly is not always) a bit unimaginative or repetitive. I have a perpetual craving to see art that I’ve never seen before, to see art that is brave and innovative and fiercely honest. Just as overly sentimental art fails to tell the truth because it hides from the shadow, relentlessly dark imagery fails to tell the truth, because it denies light. Both fail because the nature of reality is that light and dark are in a constant, dynamic interplay, that they are gradually, inevitably part and parcel of the other, connected as they are by infinite gradations of gray. It’s the yin-yang thing. You can’t avoid it.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: Do you make art for yourself, or do you have a market in mind?
STEINER: I make what comes through. I don’t seem to have it in my nature to do otherwise. If I did, I don’t think I’d be doing what I’m doing, being an artist. It’s pretty much got a hold on me.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: Do you believe that art has a higher purpose, other than to decorate a room? if so, please explain?
STEINER: I’m not sure I would say I believe that it has a higher purpose, because I don’t really know for sure, and don’t want to hang my hat on that belief or make a grand pronouncement about it. But I would say that in my heart of hearts I feel that art is necessary for our psyches, for our bodies, for our existence as humans. I read somewhere that the ancient Hebrew nomadic tribes, when they’d find a place in the desert where they intended to set up camp, would take a tent stake, called an “ameyn” and ritualistically ram it into the ground, claiming it as their own, literally grounding themselves in that place with the proclamation of that word. “Ameyn” is of course “amen”, a word commonly used to ‘stake’ prayers into reality, into time and space. To me, art is like that amen or tent stake going into the ground; it’s what we use to ground ourselves into the meaning of our lives, to remind ourselves and to proclaim that we are in fact transcendent and eternal slips of light—intangible souls—navigating the Earth plane at a certain point in time. Without art, we drift into states of spiritual and social anomie…we lose ourselves in our infinite nature, we lose our minds. Art gives us a place to be, a stake in the ground, a way to define ourselves. For that reason, art can be a powerful manipulator of the psyche; it is used as effective propaganda all the time, for governments, corporations, religions, etc. It connects with the emotions and the deepest places within ourselves, where we are most pure and beautiful and innocent, like children. Which begs the question: what is the responsibility of the artist in making art? I don’t have an answer to that. My approach is to work as hard as I can to find a place of truth, to express my nature and loves and fears and to try to get at the center of the meaning of existence. It’s a devotion that means I have to go into the darkest places and the lightest places in my psyche, continuously. It can be very intense and very painful and very wonderful and thrilling. I don’t know exactly why I do it, except that I’m intensely compelled to. I hope that my work and my journey touch people.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: If you could meet any artist from the past who would it be?
STEINER: There would be so many…but if I had to choose one, I would probably say John Lennon, because his music and life and death are so viscerally and emotionally intertwined with the events of my life. I have missed his presence on the planet profoundly since he left, and still cry when I hear his music.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: In what way do you want to be remembered?
STEINER: My greatest, ultimate hope would be that there are people thriving on a healthy Earth a thousand years from now, people who have long since forgotten this little lifetime of mine, because they’ve got more important things on their minds, like loving their children, and taking care of the planet.
STEINER: I wouldn’t say that I have a muse per se, though I do sometimes feel presences or energies with me when I work…subtle flows of color, light, sound and emotion that feel like they are imprinted with the resonances of distant places and times and people. I might call them muses, or collections of information, or echoes in time that leave behind impressions in my consciousness and in my work. They are intangible, but they feel very clear and present at times.
I think I’d be accurate in saying, however, that the natural world, the water, the sky, the land, is really my primary muse. Not any literal or particular landscape—I don’t consider myself a landscape painter, though I incorporate elements of landscape into my work—but the deeper essence of the natural world, the breakdown of its parts, its internal geometry. I grew up in rural northern California, very close to nature, and as a kid my love for nature was so deep that it was like a longing, almost painful. My work, I think, grows out of that; on some level, it’s an effort to relieve that longing, to get inside of nature, to engage with it, to merge with it. Of course, within this desire, there is always the deeper desire to know my own nature, to experience my own being in a pure, unencumbered way. Painting allows me to do that; it relieves me of the everyday suffering of the mind, and it fulfills my desire to get inside of what is dynamic and beautiful and meaningful about being alive.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: Are you a visual artist, writer, musician or film maker?
STEINER: I’m a visual artist—a painter. That’s what I do, and my identity and career and life are focused on that goal. I’m also a singer, and I’m something of a writer and poet. I worked as a writer for a number of years, and got my graduate degree in creative writing. The truth is, though, I’ve found that I’m much happier, more adept, and more comfortable dwelling in the mind of the painter, because it is non-linear, pre-linguistic, and simultaneous (the painter can see all of her creation at one time). I am also not particularly interested in telling stories, which, as you can imagine, can be problematic for a writer. Even as a painter, I avoid narrative in my work, preferring to communicate in more abstract visual language that, at least to me, feels truer, closer to the bone. Painting allows me to more directly express the quiet, subtle moments in life when time slows down, when stories stop…these are the moments that interest me most. When all is stillness, and there is nothing left but feeling, impulse, movement, harmony, tension, timelessness, expansion, ecstasy, beauty, emptiness.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: What artists have influenced your work?
STEINER: Many movements and artists influence my work, though I usually see them first in my paintings, rather than planning or deciding what they will be. Among my influences, I would count the art nouveau movement, medieval Catholic art (illuminations, stained glass), textiles from all over the world (India, Japan, Africa, Europe), origami and Japanese graphic design, Chinese calligraphy and landscapes, botanical drawings, Victorian fashion, aboriginal art (which I discovered only very recently, after being told my work was reminiscent of it), modern/minimalist design, Tibetan Buddhist painting, Rococo, folk and religious art from all over the world (Mexico, Eastern Europe, India, Bali). I am also an admirer of many contemporary painters: Julie Heffernan and Darren Waterston are current favorites, as are Clare Rojas, Rex Ray, Margaret Kilgallen and the “Mission School” painters from my long-time home of San Francisco. Also: Frida Kahlo, Kiki Smith, Yoko Ono, Hokusai, Van Gogh. I grew up worshipping the work of Georgia O’Keefe and as a teenager used to copy her paintings in pencil and watercolor in my sketchbooks; recently, I was looking through some of her work and was struck by how deeply her work had imprinted in my artistic sensibilities, affinities and tastes. And last but certainly not least, I am influenced by my husband, Aaron Castro, who is a powerfully inspiring artist and partner and friend.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: At what age did you have an interest in art, and when did you first realize you would be an artist?
STEINER: I feel like I knew from the time I was a small child that I was an artist, but then, kids are artists naturally, and they all know it, don’t they? But…to pinpoint a specific moment, I would say it was probably on a family trip to Washington D.C., when I was eleven or twelve. My mom and I went to the Smithsonian Art Museum and spent hours there looking at the paintings…and I was just in a kind of ecstatic state, totally blissed out. Afterward, riding with my family in a train car, I declared with conviction that I was going to be an artist when I grew up. I remember my mother reacting positively, being very excited and sweet about it. Of course, there have been many instances since then in which I’ve decided/realized anew that I am an artist—in high school, in college, in my late twenties. In a way, I reaffirm my choice to be an artist every day when I show up to work in my studio.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: Do you plan out your work before you do it, or does it evolve organically?
STEINER: Very rarely do I plan my work. I tend to work on impulse, to feel the art in my body first…in my solar plexus or throat or chest…and I allow it to gestate, to percolate in my consciousness. I usually work on a large number of pieces at a time—sometimes as many as 20 or 30—and I move around from piece to piece, depending on what is calling me. My process reminds me a little of the way the surfers here in Santa Cruz go out to the beach and sit in their trucks and study the waves for long periods of time. Then, something clicks, and they go into the water. That’s kind of what I do. I sit with the paintings—even if they’re just blank canvases—till something clicks, then I go into the water.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: Is there a mental process? Do you have a question to ask or answer?
STEINER: I feel like in my creative process there’s a nexus point—a hub of consciousness where the mental, emotional, physical and ethereal meet…and the inspiration tends to move from the ethereal, through that hub, down the arms, through the hands and paintbrush, onto the canvas. Within that mysterious process, the conceptual or mental is somehow present—I have general ideas and themes that play out, over and over—for example, I have a very real concern for the state of the Earth; I also have a deep craving to connect with the anonymous women artisans who came before me, who gathered together in sewing circles, and worked so intimately with textile design and pattern and ornamentation. But ideas, issues, themes, they never really come first. Like I don’t sit down in my studio and think “I’m going to connect with my ancestors today” or “I’m going to express my concern over the fact that we’re abusing the planet.” Not because I don’t want to sometimes, but because it just doesn’t seem to work for me; it’s putting the cart before the horse. I think there are a lot of artists out there who are really good at starting from the conceptual, and I truly admire them and sometimes envy them. For me, I seem to have to surrender to approaching my work as a process of studying and engaging and playing with the basic building blocks of the physical world…color, form, material, etc. I think the concepts are backdrops to the creative process, but they are not the process itself; it’s almost as if they’re there to be transcended or forgotten. I think I really do forget them—my mind goes out the window when I paint—and yet when I look at finished bodies of work, I’m amazed that the concepts have managed to stay, to continue to be a relevant and grounding force in the work.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: If you have had formal training, do you feel your educational process hindered your artistic expression in anyway?
STEINER: Yes, I’d say my formal training—limited as it was—was something of a hindrance, at least in the short-term. When I started my undergrad studies at Mills College in the early nineties, I did so with the intention to be an art major. I took a handful of art classes, felt totally traumatized and baffled and inadequate, and changed my major. After that, it took me a good seven years until I began painting with any kind of discipline or intention again. The upshot was that when I did come back to painting, it was with a kind of fire and directedness that I had not known before. Somehow, my voice had found me, not through painting, but through life experience. So, in the long term, I’m grateful for that experience, because it strengthened my will, conviction and vision. It tested my resolve, which is important for an artist.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: Do you use the creative process to express your internal conflicts or to purge yourself of emotions?
STEINER: I’d say so, yes, not really consciously, but more alchemically, in an experiential way. Art is a discipline; it’s a devotional practice and a commitment. There’s something about showing up in the studio, rain or shine, whatever’s happening in my life, that is just profoundly comforting. I can bring the deepest sorrows of my life to the table, and the art will eventually transmute them. The flip-side of that is that I can’t hide from my sorrows, my conflicts, my shadow, because the creative process doesn’t allow lying or hiding. It’s constantly cleaning house on the psyche, both personally, and for the collective, the ancestors, the rocks and trees and all the rest. The creative process has a graceful way of touching the deepest, most painful wounds. It brings existential comfort, somehow speaks to those unanswerable, fundamental questions about the nature of reality that can’t ever really be answered.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: If so, do you feel that art can be a kind of therapy?
STEINER: Without question; I think art is inherently therapeutic, and there’s no way around that…it’s a roto-rooter for the soul. Of course, its value as therapy and its aesthetic value are not necessarily related. The merit of art therapy is in its healing or cathartic effect on the individual. Fine art has to stand on different criteria, on its own artistic merit.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: What is your opinion about the current art movements which focus on dark imagery?
STEINER: That’s a very interesting question, and one that I’ve actually thought about a lot, but which I haven’t really been able to satisfactorily answer. Certainly, like all expression, it’s by nature a reflection of the inner worlds of the people expressing it…and let’s face it, to be alive on planet Earth today means confronting on some level the absurd dream of the apocalypse that humanity is very dangerously working with now. So…from that perspective, it should be no surprise that dark imagery is showing up in art these days. I don’t know…I think about the R. Crumb model…that art can be a kind of exorcism of internal demons. I agree with this idea and know from first-hand experience that it’s true. And yet, there’s a place where, at least from my perspective, very dark imagery in art has become too fashionable for its own good, and can be (though it certainly is not always) a bit unimaginative or repetitive. I have a perpetual craving to see art that I’ve never seen before, to see art that is brave and innovative and fiercely honest. Just as overly sentimental art fails to tell the truth because it hides from the shadow, relentlessly dark imagery fails to tell the truth, because it denies light. Both fail because the nature of reality is that light and dark are in a constant, dynamic interplay, that they are gradually, inevitably part and parcel of the other, connected as they are by infinite gradations of gray. It’s the yin-yang thing. You can’t avoid it.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: Do you make art for yourself, or do you have a market in mind?
STEINER: I make what comes through. I don’t seem to have it in my nature to do otherwise. If I did, I don’t think I’d be doing what I’m doing, being an artist. It’s pretty much got a hold on me.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: Do you believe that art has a higher purpose, other than to decorate a room? if so, please explain?
STEINER: I’m not sure I would say I believe that it has a higher purpose, because I don’t really know for sure, and don’t want to hang my hat on that belief or make a grand pronouncement about it. But I would say that in my heart of hearts I feel that art is necessary for our psyches, for our bodies, for our existence as humans. I read somewhere that the ancient Hebrew nomadic tribes, when they’d find a place in the desert where they intended to set up camp, would take a tent stake, called an “ameyn” and ritualistically ram it into the ground, claiming it as their own, literally grounding themselves in that place with the proclamation of that word. “Ameyn” is of course “amen”, a word commonly used to ‘stake’ prayers into reality, into time and space. To me, art is like that amen or tent stake going into the ground; it’s what we use to ground ourselves into the meaning of our lives, to remind ourselves and to proclaim that we are in fact transcendent and eternal slips of light—intangible souls—navigating the Earth plane at a certain point in time. Without art, we drift into states of spiritual and social anomie…we lose ourselves in our infinite nature, we lose our minds. Art gives us a place to be, a stake in the ground, a way to define ourselves. For that reason, art can be a powerful manipulator of the psyche; it is used as effective propaganda all the time, for governments, corporations, religions, etc. It connects with the emotions and the deepest places within ourselves, where we are most pure and beautiful and innocent, like children. Which begs the question: what is the responsibility of the artist in making art? I don’t have an answer to that. My approach is to work as hard as I can to find a place of truth, to express my nature and loves and fears and to try to get at the center of the meaning of existence. It’s a devotion that means I have to go into the darkest places and the lightest places in my psyche, continuously. It can be very intense and very painful and very wonderful and thrilling. I don’t know exactly why I do it, except that I’m intensely compelled to. I hope that my work and my journey touch people.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: If you could meet any artist from the past who would it be?
STEINER: There would be so many…but if I had to choose one, I would probably say John Lennon, because his music and life and death are so viscerally and emotionally intertwined with the events of my life. I have missed his presence on the planet profoundly since he left, and still cry when I hear his music.
HATHOR’S TRIBE: In what way do you want to be remembered?
STEINER: My greatest, ultimate hope would be that there are people thriving on a healthy Earth a thousand years from now, people who have long since forgotten this little lifetime of mine, because they’ve got more important things on their minds, like loving their children, and taking care of the planet.
posted by:
|
Advertisement
Advertisement
