WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:09.469 --> 00:00:15.250 Actually, I was in the studio painting a landscape and I was listening to 00:00:15.250 --> 00:00:20.680 Phillip Adams and he was interviewing the then new chief scientist for Australia 00:00:20.680 --> 00:00:26.890 Professor Penny Sackett. So i was listening to this conversation and it just struck 00:00:26.890 --> 00:00:34.059 me what a engaged and articulate voice she had on the radio and I thought I was 00:00:34.059 --> 00:00:39.420 really engaged with what she was saying. It was very much against a backdrop of 00:00:39.420 --> 00:00:46.360 fairly strong political and personal attacks about the issue of climate 00:00:46.360 --> 00:00:52.030 change at the time it was a very heated kind of discussion and here was a voice 00:00:52.030 --> 00:00:59.530 that was entirely reasoned and yet warm and engaging. And I was really 00:00:59.530 --> 00:01:05.740 inspired to paint her at that moment. Well I would say that the idea of having 00:01:05.740 --> 00:01:13.229 my portrait painted was a bit daunting, and I been asked twice before and 00:01:13.229 --> 00:01:17.320 declined but this was a little bit different I think for a couple of 00:01:17.320 --> 00:01:23.290 reasons. First of all I was in the position of Chief Scientist and that in 00:01:23.290 --> 00:01:27.610 that role it's important to try and bring science to everyone and the people 00:01:27.610 --> 00:01:31.479 in my office said you know 'Penny this is an opportunity to do something 00:01:31.479 --> 00:01:35.740 completely different that a Chief Scientist wouldn't normally do' and 00:01:35.740 --> 00:01:41.290 that's to reach out and really in a very different way talk about how science and 00:01:41.290 --> 00:01:46.630 art are part of the same human experience I suppose it did take a bit 00:01:46.630 --> 00:01:53.470 of bravery on my part but what overcame that was a kind of trust that I 00:01:53.470 --> 00:01:59.439 developed in Andrew because he did explain what he was trying to portray in 00:01:59.439 --> 00:02:06.670 the painting and it was a story it's a I think it's a deep story there are layers 00:02:06.670 --> 00:02:10.530 the more you look at the at the portrait the more you see and I 00:02:10.530 --> 00:02:17.209 was a part of that story I I was really there to help him tell it and so my 00:02:17.209 --> 00:02:23.939 image was important to him to tell the story that he wanted to tell. I didn't 00:02:23.939 --> 00:02:30.599 want it just to be a portrait where you've got a sitter and that's it. It was 00:02:30.599 --> 00:02:35.040 very much a figure in an environment. Because I'm a landscape painter it came 00:02:35.040 --> 00:02:40.349 about as a kind of an interior landscape in a sense in that in the same way that 00:02:40.349 --> 00:02:47.760 the Dutch painters create a space that has so much interior depth that you can 00:02:47.760 --> 00:02:55.459 project yourself almost as far as you want to. When the painting was unveiled 00:02:55.459 --> 00:03:03.000 my memory was of not saying anything at all, the first thing I remember was being 00:03:03.000 --> 00:03:08.730 struck by the quality of light which again is so important in the in the 00:03:08.730 --> 00:03:15.599 early Dutch works I think that was the first thing that it looked luminous as 00:03:15.599 --> 00:03:21.780 though it was almost you know giving off a light of its own. The way I recall it 00:03:21.780 --> 00:03:27.900 was that Penny really looked at it and took it in and then looked really 00:03:27.900 --> 00:03:35.609 closely and said 'Oh my, that's my finger!'. After Andrew reminded me I did 00:03:35.609 --> 00:03:42.629 remember my remark about the finger and it's difficult to explain what I mean by 00:03:42.629 --> 00:03:48.970 likeness it isn't so much that it looks like my finger and skin tone or any 00:03:48.970 --> 00:03:53.290 like that it's the posture of a finger if there could be such a thing, and I 00:03:53.290 --> 00:03:58.900 recognised it as that's the way I hold my hand and I suppose I'm not used to 00:03:58.900 --> 00:04:04.180 looking at my face very much we're used to looking at my hands I do my work with 00:04:04.180 --> 00:04:12.070 my hands so in some sense they're more a part of me that I identify with than my 00:04:12.070 --> 00:04:22.360 face, and to realise that that had been captured, that posture had been captured 00:04:22.360 --> 00:04:27.760 in the painting was remarkable, because it was personal. I didn't think 00:04:27.760 --> 00:04:33.760 anybody else would notice how I held my hands you know, that seems a very personal 00:04:33.760 --> 00:04:39.060 thing. And it was, it was personal.