Scientist Series

Finkel Study

Dr Alan Finkel AC

Dr Alan Finkel AC holding the Finkel Study, a smaller darker Observerism portrait study by Samuel Morrow, oil on canvas
Dr Alan Finkel AC with the study, which he acquired together with the large portrait.

About this work

Dr Alan Finkel AC was Australia’s Chief Scientist from 2016 to 2020. An electrical engineer and neuroscientist, he spent twenty-three years building instruments sensitive enough to record the electricity of a single living cell, and eight years as Chancellor of Monash University, before taking on the job of advising a country on what it knows.

An intimate study with a darker palette and a harder ring treatment. The concentric wave structures dominate the space around the subject, foregrounding the uncollapsed state. Where the large portrait places Finkel in the world of national science, this one leaves only the observer and everything he has not yet looked at.