Steven Shearer Wins 2026 Audain Prize: 100,000 Canadian Dollars for the Vancouver Artist

Steven Shearer has been named the winner of the 2026 Audain Prize, one of Canada’s most prestigious visual arts honors, with an award of 100,000 Canadian dollars (about 71,000 U.S. dollars). The prize, now in its 23rd year, was presented to the artist on Wednesday, September 23, at a ceremony held in the ballroom of the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver.

The jury praised Shearer for “an extraordinary career marked by sustained artistic achievement.” The prize was founded in 2004 by collector and philanthropist Michael Audain and is awarded annually by the Audain Art Museum in Whistler, British Columbia, with the aim of “elevating artists from British Columbia.” Previous winners include well-known names such as Brian Jungen, Rebecca Belmore, Dana Claxton, Ian Wallace and James Hart.

Shearer is a Vancouver-based multidisciplinary artist, known for his fantastical and uncanny portraits, as well as for photoconceptualism-influenced images of Generation X youth. His work weaves art-history references — from Fauvism to German Romantic painting — with contemporary youth subcultures such as heavy metal, punk and 1970s glam rock. Jury member Emmy Lee Wall said his work “collapses traditional hierarchies between ‘high art’ and the fragile, aggressive energy of adolescent rebellion.”

Shearer’s art has received international recognition: he has exhibited at Tate Modern in London (2005) and represented Canada at the Venice Biennale (2011). The artist is represented by the David Zwirner gallery — with solo exhibitions in New York in 2024 and in London this year — as well as by Galerie Eva Presenhuber. A solo exhibition at the Aspen Art Museum in Colorado is planned for next year.

Asked what he will do with the prize money, Shearer said he will reinvest it in his expanding studio, where he is developing a series of “mysterious portraits” based on his imagination and new body-scanning technology.

Source: The Art Newspaper