WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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Actually, I was in the studio painting a
landscape and I was listening to

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Phillip Adams and he was interviewing the
then new chief scientist for Australia

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Professor Penny Sackett. So i was listening to this conversation and it just struck

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me what a engaged and articulate voice
she had on the radio and I thought I was

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really engaged with what she was saying. It was very much against a backdrop of

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fairly strong political and personal
attacks about the issue of climate

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change at the time it was a very heated
kind of discussion and here was a voice

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that was entirely reasoned and yet warm
and engaging. And I was really

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inspired to paint her at that moment. Well I would say that the idea of having

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my portrait painted was a bit daunting,
and I been asked twice before and

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declined but this was a little bit
different I think for a couple of

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reasons. First of all I was in the
position of Chief Scientist and that in

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that role it's important to try and
bring science to everyone and the people

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in my office said you know 'Penny this is
an opportunity to do something

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completely different that a Chief
Scientist wouldn't normally do' and

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that's to reach out and really in a very
different way talk about how science and

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art are part of the same human
experience I suppose it did take a bit

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of bravery on my part but what overcame
that was a kind of trust that I

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developed in Andrew because he did
explain what he was trying to portray in

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the painting and it was a story it's a I
think it's a deep story there are layers

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the more you look at the
at the portrait the more you see and I

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was a part of that story I I was really
there to help him tell it and so my

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image was important to him to tell the
story that he wanted to tell. I didn't

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want it just to be a portrait where
you've got a sitter and that's it. It was

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very much a figure in an environment.
Because I'm a landscape painter it came

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about as a kind of an interior landscape
in a sense in that in the same way that

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the Dutch painters create a space that
has so much interior depth that you can

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project yourself almost as far as you
want to. When the painting was unveiled

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my memory was of not saying anything at
all, the first thing I remember was being

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struck by the quality of light which
again is so important in the in the

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early Dutch works I think that was the
first thing that it looked luminous as

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though it was almost you know giving off
a light of its own. The way I recall it

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was that Penny really looked at it and
took it in and then looked really

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closely and said 'Oh my, that's my
finger!'. After Andrew reminded me I did

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remember my remark about the finger and it's difficult to explain what I mean by

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likeness it isn't so much that it looks
like my finger and skin tone or any

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like that it's the posture of a finger if
there could be such a thing, and I

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recognised it as that's the way I hold
my hand and I suppose I'm not used to

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looking at my face very much we're used
to looking at my hands I do my work with

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my hands so in some sense they're more a part of me that I identify with than my

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face, and to realise that that had been
captured, that posture had been captured

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in the painting was remarkable,
because it was personal. I didn't think

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anybody else would notice how I held my
hands you know, that seems a very personal

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thing. And it was, it was personal.