Another country

There’s something different about Tai-Shan Schierenberg’s new show at Flowers Central: it has a title, Myths. This may not sound like much — and Schierenberg shrugs it off — but when an artist abandons the neutrality of New Paintings for a title with so much historical baggage you suspect something is afoot. And when you enter the gallery and find paintings of the Black Forest intermingled with his usual English subjects, you can guess what it is.

Despite his name — his mother was Chinese and his father is German — Schierenberg has passed until now for an English painter. A product of St Martin’s and the Slade, since he won first prize in the 1989 John Player Portrait Award at the age of 27, he has been in demand as a portraitist to the British establishment. But one reason for the success of his portraits — apart from his obvious gift for getting a likeness — is the refreshing unEnglishness of his painting style.