Biography

Douglas I. Sheer was born in 1944 in New York City to two artist parents, Benjamin Sheer and Marcia C. Sheer.  He grew up in Greenwich Village and attended P. S. 41 where his classmates included future critic A. D. Coleman and future actor Robert DeNiro. Both parents had been a part of the WPA and Artists Union in the 1930s and spent time in Woodstock, NY.  

His parents maintained a second apartment on the same floor as their residential unit in a Hudson Street apartment building near the Meat Market and that studio faced north and saw the operating High Line Railroad. He was also exposed to the art teaching of Hans Hofmann, to whose class his parents went in the early 1950s. He is the only known artist to have attended Hofmann classes on 8th Street as a child, due to his parent’s frequent inability to find a sitter. He was honored to be chosen to proof the registry of Hofmann students, by Tina Dickey, author of “Color Creates Light,” due to that unique childhood experience and his ATOA efforts to keep Hofmann’s legacy alive. Summers were spent in Provincetown, where many Hofmann students migrated in that period, where they stayed on Captain Jack’s Wharf close to Hofmann’s P-town home. 

In childhood his parents were followers of Wilhelm Reich and early adopters of the Macrobiotic diet. 

Sheer attended the Rhodes Preparatory School on west 54th Street, overlooking the garden of the Museum of Modern Art from the north and near the entrance to the Whitney Museum which allowed pass-holders to use both the Whitney and enter MoMA from 54th Street, which he did almost daily. 

His first art teacher, at Rhodes, was Pop artist Jim Dine who encouraged his interest in painting and assisted him in applying to Rhode Island School of Design where he studied art, majoring in painting. Later study of painting, printmaking and sculpture included classes at the Art Students League, the School of Visual Arts and the Woodstock School of Art. 

Childhood and teenage friends were often the children of other artists and included, not only Allan Coleman and De Niro, but also Wendy Lambert, Maggie Marx, Diane Agostini, Hannelore (Hani) Dzubas, Michelle Roseman, Ann Cooper, Ryder Syvertsen, Robert and Laird Monahan, James Scott Brown, Emlyn Williams, Reiko Sunami, Steve Rivers, Vincent Sklena, Marc Felix, John Harriman, Michael Monsky and the brothers Sebastian (Batan) Matta and Gordon Matta-Clark. 

Sheer’s painting in the late 1960s and early 70s was influenced by Paul Klee and others, but, more geometric than expressionistic. Early collectors included the Chester Dale collection (now Foundation), actress Dina Merrill and Village Voice columnist, Richard Goldstein to name a few. But, by around 1969, in addition to his ongoing abstract painting, he had discovered experimental film and soon thereafter video art which was just a fledgling movement at that time. Sheer also worked with the Judson Poet’s Theater south of Washington Square, where he created sets, stage managed and on one occasion acted in a play. 

As a video artist, first arriving at CTL Electronics as a customer, he soon was working at its Egg Store video facility, in Tribeca, where he stayed for several years, creating his own video art and assisting customers who included: Nam-June Paik, Yoko Ono, Bob Vila, Francis Lee, Twyla Tharp, Global Village, Merce Cunningham, Mary Lucier, Peter Campus, Aldo Tambellini, Jonas Mekas and Charlotte Moorman. 

Sheer emerged from years of creating and showing colorized and painterly abstract videographic images and motion video at the various video screening venues, such as The Kitchen, that existed in the 60s and 70s in and around SoHo. He took part in several of the New York Avant Garde Festivals. He is credited with being the first artist to ‘colorize’ black and white film footage, for a Hollywood client.  

Woodstock featured significantly in his development as an artist and as a leader. Meeting many artists, musicians and writers in the period of the late 1960s and 1970s he found myself spending a good deal of his time upstate. One venture he got involved with was Dharma Brothers, a music booking firm that represented acts for the college concert circuit. My business partner was Betty-Ann Lopate, sister of Philip and Leonard Lopate. Another venture he was involved in was called Prajna. Prajna was to be large scale artists retreat and study center with some residencies. The ‘main energy’ behind the project was Allon Schoener, famous for the controversial Metropolitan Museum exhibit called “Harlem on my Mind.” Sheer co-wrote the business plan. Sheer brought some Woodstock artists including Zubin to the Egg Store to work on projects. 

It was while running the Egg Store that Sheer met painter and videographer Robert Wiegand and filmmaker and writer Lori Antonacci, with whom he co-founded and named the panel series Artists Talk on Art in the summer of 1974. The first panels were held in January of 1975 in SoHo.  

In additional to painting and showing his video art and painting, Sheer led Artists Talk on Art, first as President of its steering committee and later its board. Soon he was elevated to Chairman, a title he retained until stepping down from leadership in 2019 but remaining on the board. He currently serves as its president. During his last decade in management of the art world’s longest running panel series, he acted as archivist, organizing ATOA’s then 900 audio and video recordings and over 60 additional boxes of papers, all of which he supervised the organizing and digitizing of. He also contacted and courted more than 40 institutions on behalf of the ATOA archive, ultimately placing it at Archives of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C. The recordings cover the appearances of over 8,500 artists. In 2019 Sheer was named Chairman Emeritus of the organization on whose board he remains. ATOA will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2024. 

Sheer lived in SoHo and Tribeca lofts starting in the late 1960s. He formerly had a country house in Sullivan County, New York, for 20 years but relocated to Woodstock, New York ten years ago.  

In recent years Sheer has made wider contacts with more family and discovered that, among his cousins are: Matthew Slotover, co-principal of the Frieze art fairs, Gene Luntz, former business manager of the artist Peter Max and now representing Mark Kostabi. One cousin, in particular, Ellen Koment, with whom he has been in constant contact throughout his life, is, like him, a painter. 

In Woodstock, aside from continuing to paint and exhibit, he serves on its board of directors and the programming and exhibition committees of the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild and heads its Byrdcliffe Forum, which used the Zoom platform to provide virtual programming throughout the pandemic. He also serves on the education and public engagement committee of the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art in New Paltz, New York.    

He has shown his art widely, particularly in recent years, in the Hudson Valley.