Pat Steir rose to prominence with the first generation of feminist artists in the early 1970s. A founding member of the important collective Heresies, she challenged the movement’s emphasis on making representational imagery. Deeply influenced by John Cage’s ideas about improvisation and chance, Steir embraced a practice of throwing and drizzling paint and finding freedom in “being more attached to the process than the conclusion,” as she put it.

Initiated in the 1980s, Steir’s “Waterfall” series stemmed from her interest in Japanese woodcuts and Chinese landscape painting. Gestural and meditative, "Black and White One Stroke Waterfall" features a single, central vertical brushstroke that fuses its material, technique, and subject—the descending cascade of white paint appears to churn up a spray, conveying the visceral sensation of standing at the foot of a towering waterfall. Steir stated, “[These works] are about flow, among other things—waterfalls, rivers and oceans, rainstorms and time—all things that flow and return in other forms.”