Steven Shearer, a Vancouver-based artist renowned for blending historical portraiture with contemporary sensibilities, has been awarded Canada’s prestigious Audain Prize, a $71,000 accolade for senior artists.

The prize, dedicated to British Columbia-based creatives and last year’s recipient Brian Jungen, honours Shearer’s comprehensive engagement with art history and everyday visual culture, incorporating references as varied as heavy metal and internet memes.

Shearer’s work spans painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, printmaking and collage. Yet, his reclusive nature remains a mystery, with no photos of him online, as he once stated in a video shared by the Audain Prize.

Reflecting on his process, Shearer said, “I try to stay out of the way once the pictures are done.” This echoes the musings of artist Eddy Frankel, likening Shearer’s work to “Edvard Munch high on weed, or the fauvists drinking cider.”

In a recent conversation with fashion designer Raf Simons, Shearer shared his studio methods: “I used to slash the paintings and destroy them, but now I just do other things, and the paintings survive.”