Steven Shearer

2005

Painting, 86.4 x 66 cm.
Materials: oil, canvas

Collection: Collection M HKA/ Flemish Community (Inv. no. BK7651_M414).

The theme of Shearer’s Drag goes back to his own environment, to a generally autobiographical atmosphere. For this portrait, the front man of a notorious metal band stood as a model, and the artist refers to the subcultures of metal- and hard rock as forms of contemporary folk art. For that matter, the original photograph may be traced back as an unsightly thumbnail, in Puffs (2006), a digital collage that typifies the archival side of Shearer’s practice, and is the result of endless browsing through the visual proliferation of the internet. In his painting technique, Shearer shows himself as an assiduous student of Western art history. In this work, too, there are echoes of Bosh, Dürer, Holbein, Bonnard, Manet, Munch and Toulouse-Lautrec.