Steven Shearer’s Rejection Letter: “I imagined the art world was for people with means”

I like this approach because people now only really talk about their successes and triumphs. It could be a generational observation too, because in the ‘90s in Canada, you didn’t go into the art world with the sense that you would be successful and that a career was waiting for you. It was more like taking a vow of poverty. It’s hard to imagine how younger artists today envision their prospects in the art world. In my early career, I had the sense that rejection and invisibility were part of the path, especially in Vancouver.

I’m from a working-class family, we lived in the suburbs, and I grew up feeling I was in a cultural wasteland. The more I learned about art history at art school in Vancouver, the more humbling it was. I could find precedents where artists came from modest beginnings or chose their subjects from the margins of society. But it also made me realise that the backdrop for that history was elsewhere.

Sorry Steve, (1999) was kind of like writing my own rejection letter. It’s an affirmation of “Yes. I know, you consider my interests and background and everything worthless.” I found that staking that claim was an important step. I made the piece just a few years out of art school when I was starting my career. It came from more senior artists looking at source material in my studio, and being appalled, saying: “Oh, man, this is just so trashy,” just because I was looking at working-class culture. The work was just something I wrote down almost like it was written by someone else. In a sense that was a rejection I could sense from people who were on a higher cultural mission with their art. This was the kind of treatment I was gonna get from everyone who was aspiring to make themselves look better.

I think I just realised that I wanted to acknowledge where I was from. I also learnt to embrace things, even if they were embarrassing, even if they didn’t seem like they were giving me the upper hand. If somehow it fit with what I was doing, I would just incorporate it.

At that time too, in art school, identity politics were central. I come from this place that’s sort of ‘outside’, so it gave me confidence to explore this. But at the same time, I guess I could see how the art world in its ‘proper’ sense was the territory of people with means. It was exciting to me that through appropriation I could bring all this other stuff into my art.

For the last 20 years, I’ve been a professional artist and I’ve been making a living doing it. It’s all beyond what I could have imagined happening. When I started, the artists here that I respected, like Jeff Wall or Rodney Graham, all had jobs. They didn’t support themselves by just being artists. I didn’t expect people to be interested in what I was doing, so I just made sure I was interested in what I was doing. I think it’s harder today for younger artists to find the space to be like, “okay, forgetting everything that’s happening right now, what would really motivate me to keep working?” I’m still travelling down that same road that I started following when there wasn’t much distraction or external interest in my work.

I got set in my ways and trusted myself. When I was getting drawn to these subjects, the dejected longhaired stoner figures and the low culture references, I thought, “well, this is probably not the kind of thing a lot of viewers would be interested in.” But what I slowly realised is that it’s not really important that the viewer is interested, it’s more important that they can see the artist’s engagement with their subject. So I would say to younger artists, you don’t necessarily have to be doing something that’s likeable or ‘of the moment’. Follow things that you’re drawn to, and your interest will create a context for the viewer to be engaged.

In 2020, a series of my sleep photographs installed on billboards as part of a photo festival in Vancouver were plastered over in a matter of days after numerous residents complained. People were saying the subjects looked dead. In a way, I didn’t feel bad because they were presented as I had intended. So it was realised. I thought they had some strength in the way that they interacted with the public space, through their scale, and as non-commercial subjects presented on a very commercial medium. And it reached people and spoke to them. What it said to a lot of people was unsettling. Because it was entirely facilitated by a marketing company, on their billboards, I knew there was no grounds for them to be like, “let’s have a discourse about this.” They just sent an email to the organisers, two days after they’d been installed saying, “Can you send us something else to put up tomorrow?” That to me was just an affirmation that those images are powerful. It’s hard not to have an emotional response, but you don’t do a project like that and assume there’s going to be a lot of subtlety in the response.

Art making done in isolation was kind of what drew me to want to be an artist. I like solitude. My thinking is always, “if this isn’t right for this time, I’m just gonna retreat into the studio, and just keep making this work. And at some point, it will be the right time for it.” I think an artist’s career is often like a tortoise race.

Back when I was just trying to find my way as an artist, it helped that I was out of reach of the art world, it gave me more time and space. I’ve realised that the things that I’m really drawn to aren’t always considered a ‘viable’ or ‘smart’ platform to work on, but I’m just going to do what I’m interested in even if it doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. I found that this approach is more sustainable.