Steven Shearer

Vancouver artist Steven Shearer makes collages, paintings and drawings, often using images he finds online as a starting point. His commissioned piece for W brings together crayon-on-paper drawings, his photograph of a painting in progress and a collection of downloaded photographs. Originally meant to serve as reference material, the Internet printouts became worn and splattered with paint. “They’ve been transformed by being in hand and around the studio,” he explains. As is the case with much of what he’s drawn to during his Web trawls, the found images “echo some kind of historical idea of portraiture,” says Shearer, pointing out the similarity between the subjects’ rocker hair and the tresses of Pre-Raphaelite ladies. Shearer’s work has been displayed at the New Museum in New York and the Tate Modern in London. His next show will be at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in New York in 2010.