Sheng ShanShan born in Shanghai.

In 1979, she entered the Shanghai Drama Academy to study Fine Art.In 1982, Sheng went to America to study Western painting at Mt. Holyoke College, going on to pursue a Master's degree at the University of Massachusetts. Exploration of abstraction and color were Sheng's main preoccupations when she returned to China in 1985.After earning her Masters degree, Sheng served as an artist in residence at Harvard University. She was chosen as official artist for Chicago's first Asian Fest and was also named one of 100 distinguished professional women in Chicago for the year 1990.In 1991, Sheng moved to San Francisco, where she has lived ever since.

Viewing the many diverse influences on her art as benefits rather than burdens, Sheng has used he conflict between tradition and modernity, East and West, to enrich her artistic style. With vibrant fields of intense color that evoke sunlight and shade, high mountains, deep valleys and the infinite expanse of the ocean, Sheng evokes an almost spiritual sense through her abstract compositions. Just as traditional Chinese painters did not offer a literal interpretation of landscape, but rather chose it as a vehicle for expression of an energy or mood, Sheng uses her abstract compositions to express some wider, underlying truth about the nature of existence.

All Sheng's work is easily recognizable for its delight in different kinds of color combinations - blue and gold, yellow and red, emerald and vermilion - the richer and more vibrant the better. Her powerful brushstrokes, applied with energy and spirit, combine in an intense color field which always appears fresh and spontaneous.

Since 1999, Sheng has expanded her repertoire from painting to other media, including site-specific sculpture and glass works. These glass sculptures represent the collaboration of the internationally recognized artist, Sheng ShanShan, with the glass workshops of the island of Murano, in Venice, the most famous center for the creation of art glass in the world.This is the first time a Chinese artist has worked in Murano and these exceptional glass sculptures are the result of the 1,000-year-old traditional techniques of Italian glass manufacturing inspired by 5,000 years of Chinese civilization and Western Abstract Expressionism.

The idea of instilling Nature with human emotion, beloved of the English Romantic poets and central also to the Chinese painting tradition, finds new expression in the very contemporary work of the acclaimed Chinese-American artist, Sheng ShanShan. Today she has monumental works installed in three of the world's tallest buildings: the Grand Hyatt Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai is home to her Dawn of the New Millennium; Twin Horses hangs in Chicago's Amoco Building; while Return to Cathay graces the lobby of Hong Kong's Central Plaza. Within these soaring high-rises, symbols of man's desire to exert intellectual and physical power over nature, Sheng ShanShan's paintings represent a different approach - an identification of man with landscape, a serene interpretation of the natural world with an emphasis on universal values that are accessible to people of different cultures and experiences.