Peter Shear, an artist here in Bloomington paints abstract suggestive works that hint at people, landscapes, shapes, and ideas without ever fully resolving them. They are striking, ironic, funny, often elusive, and sometimes confounding. You can read them like clouds. Look, tilt your head and squint. Can you see it?
You won’t actually see much of Shear’s work around here, unfortunately. You’ve just missed a solo show of his work in Brussels. He’s had solo shows in Indianapolis, Austin, Texas, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Tokyo, probably some other places too.
Like his work, Shear is funny, surprising, reflective, and a little slippery. He has a new book, a collection of his work from 2019-2022 called Accident Report. In it all the paintings are in chronological order interspersed with images of paintings from other artists all arranged in a grid reminiscent of what you mind find on Instagram. These other works are paintings Shear has posted over the year on his popular Instagram account. He often posts lesser-known works by well-known artists, but he has a broad appetite and diverse palate.
Nice Work host Tyler Lake sat down with Shear to talk about his slippery, off-kilter paintings and what it’s like being a working artist in the 21st century.
He started by playing Shear some audio of reactions from Nice Work staff Kayte Young, Alex Chambers, and Leo Paes after showing them a few of his paintings. The first one he showed them was a painting called Wallet and the second is called Eavesdropping.
