Self-portrait of the Artist, 2000 Detail of Suddenly Back to 1900 Oil on canvas (click portrait to enlarge)

Born in Shanghai in 1948, Shen came to prominence as a celebrated realist history painter in the mid-1970's. His milestone work, Standing Guard for our Great Motherland (1974), was praised by Madame Mao. For this reason, by the dramatic political changes happened in China, it was issued as half a million copies in later 1970's and was nearly destroyed in 1981. This painting was finally restored by the artist and exhibited in the famous China: 5000 years exhibition, at both the New York and Bilbao branches of the Guggenheim Museum in 1998. Another important work from this period, Climbing over the Great Snow Mountain (1977), is now in the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, USA. The 1980's saw production of several important works which are all now in the National Art Gallery and National History Museum of China. These include the eleven metre canvas Red Star over China (1987) which portrays more than a hundred figures of historic importance, and his great liberalist painting Tolerance (1988).

Shen started painting since childhood. He is self-taught thanks to Chairman Mao's closure of all universities from 1966 till his death in 1976. Shen volunteered to be a soldier farmer in Manchuria near the Russian border in 1970 and began his artist career in this region. It was only in 1982 to 1984 that the artist was able to get formal polishing of his already formidable talent at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Afterwards he worked as a professional artist in the Liaoning Art Studio. During this time he won first place and several other prizes at the National Art Exhibition Prize, as well as countless provincial art awards, and is still regarded as China's leading history painter, though he emigrated to Australia in 1989. Commissions from China continue: in 2000 from the National Military Museum and in 2003 from his home town of Jiaxing's City Museum. He was also an invited participant in the Beijing International Art Biennale in 2003 and 2005.

In 1989, with 45 dollars in his pocket, Jiawei Shen arrived in Australia to study English. To survive he drew sketch portraits of the tourists at Darling Harbour. Unlike his fellow street artists, he was determined to study portraiture for its own sake rather than just as a source of income. To this end he did at least 5000 life-size portrait sketches of people from all races and walks of life. He credits this experience with giving him the skills needed to be a professional portraitist.

Since 1992 Shen has regularly entered Australia's most prestigious art competition, the annual Archibald Prize for Portraiture. Notorious for its controversial choice of winner, this competition has seen the final accolade go to every style of portraiture from abstract to post-modern styles. Despite the relatively low profile of realist portraiture, Shen has been among the thirty-odd finalists ten times, including being runner-up. John Macdonald, a leading critic, remarked that his 1993 and 1994entries were "tremendously subtle", "the play of light and shadow is skilfully orchestrated." Of his 1998 entry Macdonald wrote: "it is a brilliant likeness, capturing the subject's nuggety figure and his piercing blue-eyed gaze. It is Shen's best Archibald entry to date, showing an ability to blend academic painterly skills with a highly innovative approach to composition." When Shen was runner-up in 1997, Macdonald commented: "Shen is a whole-hearted painter who has come through a tough artistic training in China. He has all the technical ability, the courage to take on ambitious compositions and a hint of self-deprecating wit."

Mary MacKillop of Australia, 1994 Oil on canvas, 60" x 44" Collection, Art Beatus, Hong Kong (click painitng to enlarge)

Mary MacKillop was a teacher and Catholic nun who established the Sisters of St Joseph in the 19th century. As Australia's first saint, her beatification was celebrated in 1995 with an art award sponsored by the Australian government and the church. Shen's entry Mary MacKillop of Australia (1994 ) won the $25,000 prize, and he was invited to meet the Pope the day after the award ceremony. Pope John Paul II talked with Shen and gave him a medal on January 19, 1995. At this meeting Shen declared that though not a Christian, Art was his religion and he believed in Universal Love. Catholic nuns standing by applauded this remark and the sentiment was widely reported in national and international media.

The last decade has seen Shen combining portraiture with history painting, including such works as Seven Self portraits (runner-up in the Archibald Prize of 1997), and Self-portrait: Suddenly back to 1900 (2000), which was selected for the Federation: Art and Society 1901 - 2001 at the National Art Gallery of Australia. An extension of his idea was his "new history" paintings, combining apocalyptic metaphor with large-scale quotational references to great paintings of the past. Two series of these works: Post- Millennium Testament and Century on Wheels were combined with works from the 1970's to form a powerful solo exhibition: Zai-jian Revolution in 2002. This attracted five reviews from Australia's top critics, and one of the works: The Third World (2002) was chosen by six leading critics as the best artwork of the year. It depicted 94 historically important Third World figures of the last fifty years. Another large history painting At the Turn of Century (1998) containing more than 100 important historic and contemporary Australians is on permanent display in the Queen Victoria building in Sydney's centre.

Since 1991 Shen has also executed private portrait commissions in Australia and Hong Kong, but since 1998 no longer accepts these with any regularity as they take him away from what he feels is his life's most important task - that of history painting in its various forms. Now he does at the most six to eight portrait commissions a year, which since 2003 have included Australian government commissions. These official portraits include the Hon Tom Hughes AO, QC (2003), an official portrait of the Melbourne's Lord Mayor John So (2003) and one of Lucy Turnbull, Lord Mayor of Sydney (2004).

On the night of May 14, 2004, Shen and his wife and daughter watched, with millions of others, the broadcast of the glittering royal wedding in Copenhagen of Tasmanian-born Mary Donaldson to Crown Prince Frederik. Little did Shen know that ten months later he would be commissioned to paint the star of this latter-day fairy tale: the Crown Princess herself. In February, 2005, Shen got a phone call from the director of the National Portrait Gallery and was told he had been chosen to paint Princess Mary. There was a catch however: he would only have three hours with her. Shen's years of honing his technical skills made him equal to the task, but he was unprepared for her stunning beauty face to face during the limited sitting. Now, working in his Bundeena studio, he believes he has already caught the Princess's spirit on canvas.

Jiawei Shen lives and works with his family in Bundeena, a beautiful village located on the coast south of Sydney surrounded by Royal National Park and the sea. It has been called paradise or an artists' colony. Since 2002 a group local artists organized under the name the Art Trail, open their studios to the public the first Sunday of every month. Shen and his artist wife are two of the first members of the Art Trail. Shen doesn't need to sell his works by opening his studio but he realizes that he needs to keep touch with people in front of his paintings. He talks with them, listens to them, to let them understand him more and to get more ideas from them. For him this is another kind solo-exhibition.