1951 Born in Los Angeles. Lives and works in New York
Painting inTime
...Although the works on paper tend to be less driven by the clock, they too require perfect speed. In one series of 'scratch drawings', the implicit voilence of this gesture is curbed by a caressing hand that moves rhythmically over the sheet first with a pointed stylus, leaving an invisible net of curvilinear fractures. These are brought to light through a dusting graphite and pigment that settles into the papers scarred skin and is followed by washes of graphite over the whole paper.
As in many of Steinman's drawings, the result suggest the progress of a gentle, controlled 'calligrapher's' trance, summoned to steady and release the hand from conscious interference of the mind. The imagery of writing is even rnore explicit in the series of oil stick drawings. In these tools of the media, a crayon one holds like a pencil, dictates a steady stream of marks that fill the paper as a page with line after line of cursive marks....
Ingrid Schaffner
New York City, 1986
Steven Steinman, "Navigator" (Sunset Strip Series), 1997, Oel auf Leinwand., 153 x 107 cm
