Ben Shearer

Ben Shearer (born 1941 in Adelaide, South Australia) is an Australian artist who specializes in watercolor painting of the Outback.

History When Shearer was six years old, an injury during a game of cricket resulted in blindness of his right eye. He claims this accident as the reason he spent hours painting in school instead of playing sports.

During the next three decades, Shearer taught himself how to design clothes, weave, make tapestries, draw in pastels, and paint. In 1979, Shearer began his art teaching career at St. Catherine's College, located on the campus of the University of Western Australia in Perth. The next year, he began teaching at Scotch College in Melbourne for 14 years. In 1995, he began to focus exclusively on his artwork and now uses his home as a studio. Shearer starts with pencil drawings on French Arshes paper and then applies the paint. There are usually four to six watercolours being worked on at the same time, so that when he works on one painting, the others can dry.