Tai-Shan Schierenberg
Encyclopedia
Tai-Shan Schierenberg is a portrait painter, based in London. He was the winner of the 1989 BP Portrait Award.
Practically abducted, the child spent the first years of his life with his grandparents in Malaysia but was eventually returned to his London-based parents for the beginning of primary school, quickly forgetting Chinese and acquiring a soon flawless English for that purpose.
Being taken on almost weekly visits to some London Museum or art gallery made him familiar with painting of all realms and ages. Encouraged by his admiring parents and their artist friends, he began drawing well-composed and highly complex battle scenes - in the Tibetan style.
After extensive travels to the places of Antiquity in Greece and Asia Minor, the family settled in the Black Forest and, in pursuit of a more ecologically centered life, did some subsistence farming, while the boy, by now eleven years old, started his secondary education under the auspices of a Jesuit run grammar school nearby. Latin and Natural Sciences (at which he excelled), tending the potato field, chopping fire wood, mowing, milking the goats and, where necessary, slaughtering them single handed. In his mid-teens the first cautious steps towards oil painting were undertaken. He also played and (for pocket-money) started teaching the classical guitar.
At the age of seventeen and with his secondary education completed, he left home, exposed himself to urban life and art in Frankfurt and Amsterdam, drifted over to Paris, where the family had connections to some resident artists, rekindled the old friendships, brushed up his French at the Alliance Française
, but predominantly spent his time drawing from life at the venerable Académie de Grande Chaumière.
Schierenberg eventually returned to London, where he has remained ever since. He applied to and was accepted by St. Martin's and in due course, Slade School of Art for postgraduate studies, which he finished in 1987.
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 has also executed the commission for a double portrait of the Royal Couple. His paintings can be seen at Flowers East in Hackney.
Life and career
Tai-Shan Schierenberg was born in England in 1962, the eldest of three sons to a very young Chinese mother and a nascent painter-cum-poet father of Dutch-German origin.Practically abducted, the child spent the first years of his life with his grandparents in Malaysia but was eventually returned to his London-based parents for the beginning of primary school, quickly forgetting Chinese and acquiring a soon flawless English for that purpose.
Being taken on almost weekly visits to some London Museum or art gallery made him familiar with painting of all realms and ages. Encouraged by his admiring parents and their artist friends, he began drawing well-composed and highly complex battle scenes - in the Tibetan style.
After extensive travels to the places of Antiquity in Greece and Asia Minor, the family settled in the Black Forest and, in pursuit of a more ecologically centered life, did some subsistence farming, while the boy, by now eleven years old, started his secondary education under the auspices of a Jesuit run grammar school nearby. Latin and Natural Sciences (at which he excelled), tending the potato field, chopping fire wood, mowing, milking the goats and, where necessary, slaughtering them single handed. In his mid-teens the first cautious steps towards oil painting were undertaken. He also played and (for pocket-money) started teaching the classical guitar.
At the age of seventeen and with his secondary education completed, he left home, exposed himself to urban life and art in Frankfurt and Amsterdam, drifted over to Paris, where the family had connections to some resident artists, rekindled the old friendships, brushed up his French at the Alliance Française
Alliance française
The Alliance française , or AF, is an international organisation that aims to promote French language and culture around the world. created in Paris on 21 July 1883, its primary concern is teaching French as a second language and is headquartered in Paris -History:The Alliance was created in Paris...
, but predominantly spent his time drawing from life at the venerable Académie de Grande Chaumière.
Schierenberg eventually returned to London, where he has remained ever since. He applied to and was accepted by St. Martin's and in due course, Slade School of Art for postgraduate studies, which he finished in 1987.
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
John Mortimer
Sir John Clifford Mortimer, CBE, QC was a British barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author.-Early life:...
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
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...
from 2004. He has also executed the commission for a double portrait of the Royal Couple. His paintings can be seen at Flowers East in Hackney.