Happy 70th, Professor Stephen Hawking and Thank You! ;-)

Portrait of Stephen Hawking: "Wink to Life". Technique: mixed (oil, acrylic, crayon, etc) on canvas. Size: approx. 66 x 66 cm Date: 2012

Dear Professor Stephen Hawking. I wish to thank you.

Thank you for your determination and stubbornness in life which is an inspiration to us all. I received your message addressed today quite well: "Be curious" (I am) and "Don't give up!" (I won't). This is why I decided to paint this second portrait of yours after this first one (end of 2009) after we met the year before.

Mr. Hawking, your MND (Motor Neurone Disease) limits you immensely. It allows you now to use only the right-hand side of your face. Ironically, this physical handicap permits you to "wink" to us and to this Universe. A wink to “fate”. Hence your portrait and its title.  ;-)

Creativity is a very complex and “uncertain” activity. I tried then many different solutions/ compositions to convey both your personality and the scientific issues and challenges that have occupied your entire life.

I destroyed this painting of mine.

I eventually destroyed these first compositions  but decided to come back to one of them with a new approach based on my current research regarding C.P. Snow’s “Two Cultures” question : what is apparently dividing Arts (Humanities) and Sciences and why such dichotomy? Are these disciplines irreconcilable?

Cosmology is also divided by dichotomies; the principles of quantum mechanics and the laws of general relativity (GR) of our known Universe are apparently (mathematically) irreconcilable theories, which Professor Hawking tries to solve.

The background of my 2012 portrait of Professor Hawking is an attempt to illustrate this: I decided to "superpose" patterns from particle collisions against patterns from nebulae/ galaxies. Prof. Hawking's face (mind) then appears as a possible "bridge" between these two perspectives (relativistic and quantic). We humans stand between the very large and the very small scales. 

WINKS!...
There are many winks in this portrait. Besides Professor Hawking's, there are both artistic and scientific winks too.

The background is incomplete on its left-hand side... on purpose. It refers to the so-called "theory of everything" (TOE) which Professor Hawking and his colleagues are working on for decades. At the forefront I painted what particles collisions look like when smashed into smaller pieces. The process appear very "random" and "chaotic"and I used dripping techniques from Jackson Pollock's. Although "chaotic" the particle collisions follow some patterns (straight lines or spirals) which our eyes /mind can recognize... Behind this, I painted nebulae/ galaxies which obey to Einstein's GR laws of gravity. These two "perspectives", the infinitely small (quantic level) and the infinitely large are superposed, trying to visually express this mystery.

Doing so I hope to contribute to solve another dichotomy: that between Arts (Humanities) and Sciences.

Professor Hawking's "wink" is pointing both at this TOE and Life itself.;-)

Latest news:
Unwell Hawking misses 70th birthday celebrations

Notes: 

1. A few weeks after my 2012 portrait of Professor Hawking, David Hockney was invited to do his portrait of Professor Hawking to celebrate his 70th birthday. It is now part of the Science museum exhibit. I have no idea how it looks like, it seems shown nowhere.
2. I also submitted my portrait at this year 2012 BP award of the National Portrait Gallery (NPG). This was the other reason why I finished it in January 2012 (Professor Hawking's birthday is on January 8, 1942). Why NPG? To give its curators and director an opportunity to redeem themselves after having  commissioned Professor Hawking's portrait in 1985 to Yolanda Sonnabend who delivered a very poor portrait. When visiting NPG, this portrait became my motivation for contacting Professor Hawking in 2008, and to learn we shared the same views on this poor portrait by Sonnabend. The 2012 BP award rejected my submission.