Stephen Wiltshire was born in London to West Indian parents on 24th April, 1974. His mother, Geneva Wiltshire had come from St Lucia and his father, Colvin, from Barbados. Colvin was killed in a motorcycle accident when Stephen was three years of age. He now lives with his mother in West London.
As a child, Stephen was mute and did not relate to other human beings. Aged three, he was diagnosed as autistic. At the age of five, Stephen was sent to Queensmill School in London, a school for children with special needs, where it was noticed that the only pastime he enjoyed was drawing. Aged eight, Stephen started drawing cityscapes and he learned to speak fully at the age of nine.
In 1987, the BBC QED programme, The Foolish Wise Ones, featured Stephen's astounding talent as one three autistic savants. Stephen's work has since been the subject of numerous other television programmes around the world, and the writer and psychologist, Oliver Sacks, devoted an essay to Stephen in his book An Anthropologist On Mars (Picador 1995). Stephen is the only artistic autistic savant in the world whose work has been recorded and published since his childhood. His third book, Floating Cities (Michael Joseph, 1991), was number one on the Sunday Times bestseller list.
In January 2006 it was announced that Stephen was being named by Queen Elizabeth II as a Member of the Order of the British Empire, in recognition of his services to the art world. (No specific mention of his disability was made in the citation) Later that year he opened his permanent gallery at the Royal Opera Arcade, London.
www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk