Tai Shan Schierenberg

TAI SHAN SCHIERENBERG (b 1962)

London-based Tai Shan Schierenberg has an acclaimed practice featuring portraiture and landscape alongside reflective works exploring memory, identity and belonging. He is reknowned for his paintings of the human figure and for his close analysis of the head and face through broad gestural brushstrokes, describing his work as operating “between different modes of reproducing reality”, navigating a perceptual dividing line between surface and representation. Hinting at form with an economy of line, Schierenberg captures the striking likeness of his subjects while creating dynamic sculptural surfaces that reflect a tension between the image and the vitality of the paint. He defines the constructed nature of his paintings as activating the experience of looking, allowing the mind to “recreate the image every time it is viewed.” 

Schierenberg was born in England to a German father who was a painter and a Malaysian-Chinese mother, growing up between London, Malaysia and the Black Forest. He studied at St Martin’s School of Art from 1981-1985, continuing at the Slade School of Art through 1985-1987. In 1989, Schierenberg won the prestigious Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery, and he was then commissioned by the NPG to paint the British barrister and author Sir John Mortimer (1923-2003). Further portrait commissions include a 1997 double portrait of Her Majesty the Queen and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh and a 2009 portrait of the English theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking (1942-2018). Within the National Portrait Gallery’s collection are Schierenberg's portraits of the British politician and former Secretary General of NATO Lord Carrington (1919-2018), British businessman and politician Lord Sainsbury (1927-2022) and Irish poet and playwright Seamus Heaney (1939-2013). 

Since 2013 Schierenberg has appeared regularly as a judge on Sky Arts ‘Landscape Artist of the Year’ and ‘Portrait Artist of the Year.’ He has also been involved in art television programmes including BBC2's 'Oil on Canvas' and 'Titan'. Schierenberg served as Artist in Residence at West Bromwich Albion Football Club from 2017 to 2018, as part of the Channel 4 documentary strand 'Artist in Residence,' which won the Grierson Award for Best Arts Documentary in 2019.

Tai Shan Schierenberg's work is in public collections including the National Portrait Gallery, London; Tate, London; Cambridge University; Merton College, Oxford; The Royal Society, London; The Naughton Gallery at Queen’s University, Belfast; BBC England; Chatsworth House, Derbyshire; The Ruth Borchard Collection, London; and Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.