About

When not shooting tree gaps and landing the cover of Transworld Skateboarding Magazine, professional skateboarder Dolan Stearns is making art.

You may recognize Stearns’s distinct yellow goblin-like characters on the trailer in the lot at SILO or remember his towering brace faced figure just inside the entrance to the art show at Warehouse1425. Much like his skating, his artistic styling is unmistakable. Often using a minimal palette with a stippling technique to achieve shading, Stearns’s subject is an eclectic array of nature scenes, animals, found objects, and of course, his unusual imagined creatures.

According to Dolan Stearns, he probably paints more than he skates and finds himself drawing every chance he gets. He has even worked as an artist assistant to prolific San Diego fine artist Kelsey Brooks. Known for his immense detail, Stearns spent a lot of time making precise brush strokes for Brooks for over a year. A natural translation of Dolan Stearns’s detailed pointillistic art came when he started doing tattoos. Not your everyday gun using tattooist, Stearns uses a trending DIY stick and poke method on his skate friends and any admirers for the right price.

Dolan Stearns has lived in the North Park neighborhood of San Diego but is currently traveling between skate spots including his hometown of Lake Elsinore. You can catch some of Dolan Stearns’s work in the upcoming Creative Block show at SILO on May 8th, 2015.

Photos and article by Carly Ealey

Art independently curated by Chris Konecki. For more information on art in Makers Quarter™ contact: art@makersquarter.com