The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders both past and present.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are warned that this website contains images of deceased persons.
The Gallery’s Acknowledgement of Country, and information on culturally sensitive and restricted content and the use of historic language in the collection can be found here.
David Chalmers (b.1966), philosopher, excelled at mathematics at the University of Adelaide in the 1980s and developed a fascination with consciousness and the mind. Consciousness can be described as the sense of awareness, through mental images and thoughts, of being in the world. Presently Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University, Chalmers is interested in determining fundamental principles that connect physical processes to consciousness. His books define current debates on the subject. In his work Chalmers demonstrates attentiveness to the important role played by our individual subjective experience of the world. He maintains an abiding interest in neuroscience and the psychology of consciousness.
The delicate nature of Chalmers's ideas and the clarity of his writing suggested to artist Nick Mourtzakis the necessity of creating a portrait that captures the non-physical quality of thought.
The National Portrait Gallery respects the artistic and intellectual property rights of others. Works of art from the collection are reproduced as per the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). The use of images of works from the collection may be restricted under the Act. Requests for a reproduction of a work of art can be made through a Reproduction request. For further information please contact NPG Copyright.
This 2011 portrait of David Chalmers is by Nick Mourtzakis. It is oil on canvas and measures 185 centimetres by 122 centimetres.
The philosopher David Chalmers studies consciousness. The artist was inspired to create a portrait that captures this non-physical, abstract quality of thought.
The portrait depicts David’s head and neck, large in the middle of the picture, constructed from a myriad of densely overlapping and intersecting straight light and dark blue lines on a plain white background.
David’s facial features, articulated within this geometric haze, have a greater intensity of colour and form than other areas of the head that seem to disappear and dissolve. The eyebrows are tilted inward as though in concentration, the eyes are heavily lidded, the nose slightly upturned. The closed mouth turns up on the left side. All of this is drawn with sketchy, sharp blue lines.
A thin vertical strip, a gap, runs the length of the head dividing it in two. Near both the bottom and the top of the painting are thin grey horizontal lines going from the left to the right of the image. Beyond these there are no blue lines, only the white background.
Audio description written by Marina Neilson and ready by Carolyn Eccles