Steven Shearer wins 2026 Audain Prize worth C$100,000
Vancouver painter Steven Shearer has won the 2026 Audain Prize for the Visual Arts and its C$100,000 (US$71,000) cash award.
The prize was announced on 23 September 2026 in the ballroom of the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver in Vancouver, according to The Art Newspaper. The award is now in its 23rd year.
Shearer is a Vancouver-based painter and multidisciplinary artist working in photoconceptualism, Vancouver's photography-led strand of conceptual art. His practice spans painting, drawing, sculpture and photography.
He has shown widely outside Canada. He represented Canada at the Venice Biennale in Venice in 2011. His work was shown at Tate Modern in London in 2005.
Shearer is represented by David Zwirner and Galerie Eva Presenhuber. He held the solo show Profaned Travelers with David Zwirner in New York in 2024. He is scheduled to hold a solo exhibition at the Aspen Art Museum in Colorado in 2027.
He said he would put the prize money back into his studio. He is working on a series of mystery portraits painted from imagination with the aid of body-scanning technology.
The Audain Prize for the Visual Arts was created in 2004 by the Audain Foundation, according to the foundation's website. The foundation was established in 1997 by Michael Audain. The recipient is chosen through a jury process, and the C$100,000 award is presented annually in the autumn.
The foundation has backed several other cultural bodies. It was instrumental in founding the Audain Art Museum in Whistler, the Grizzly Bear Foundation and the Jean Paul Riopelle Foundation.
What makes this stand out is how practical Shearer plans to be with it. No big purchase. Just more studio time. For anyone curious about where the money goes, that means paint, space, assistants and the slow work behind those imagined faces.
