Curtis Steiner

Curtis Steiner is an autodidactic polymath based in Seattle, WA. He is a master gardener, calligrapher, and artist. His luminous watercolors cast color and form as abstract protagonists in the midst of transformation. Soft forms swell, breach and accommodate the cavities around them, like lungs filling with air, or aquifers releasing water, in a waltz of scarcity and abundance. Informed by his calligraphy practice, Steiner’s renderings contrast precision and gesture to make the ephemeral concrete, a cloud between blinks, or a cellular exchange hidden from view. Their saturated totemic forms recall Tantric Paintings from Rajasthan, rich elemental voids to contemplate the infinite, suspended bridges to the sublime. Steiner establishes compositional parameters that generate ensuing forms, echoing parametric architecture’s pursuit of complex systems-driven geometry. Despite their meticulous abstract nature, these deliberate and organic forms suggest a human allegory. How do two individuals relate to and transform one another? What energy emerges when a couple collides?