Tai-Shan Schierenberg

Tai-Shan Schierenberg (born 1962) is a portrait painter, based in London. He is a winner of the BP Portrait Award.

Life and career

Tai-Shan Schierenberg was born in England to a German father and a Chinese mother; he has described himself as having led a complex childhood. After nearly a year he was sent to Malaysia to live with his Chinese grandparents. Chinese became his mother tongue. At the age of four, he returned to North London where he had to adjust to a bohemian lifestyle. For six years he stayed in London, forgetting his Chinese language and attaining a Cockney accent.

Schierenberg then went traveling with his parents through Europe and Turkey. When the family's money ran out they moved to his father's home town in Germany, where he stayed until his late teens. Schierenberg then moved back to London, where he has remained since. He studied at the Slade School of Art from 1981 to 1987. [ [http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/person.asp?LinkID=mp08052&role=art An article about Tai-Shan Schierenberg on the National Portrait Gallery web site.] ]

In 1989 he won first prize in the National Portrait Gallery's John Player Portrait Award, and as part of the prize, was commissioned to paint the portrait of playwright John Mortimer for the Gallery's collection. The National Portrait Gallery also holds his portraits of Lord Carrington from 1994, Lord Sainsbury 2002 and most recently Seamus Heaney from 2004. He had a one-man show at Flowers East in Hackney.

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