Painting Steven Hawking at The Chapel Yarmouth

This is one of a series I painted on modern physicists in the early 1990s and at The Chapel, South Street, Yarmouth. I had seen Hawking close-up when Bunny (Peter Burnell) and I were recording sessions with Mike Hugg at Molinare Studios in central London. He was just coming out - and even then (way before his books had made him famous), there was a little crowd of onlookers as he wheeled himself across Fauberts Place to a waiting car. We gulped to be present, and the idea for the portrait solidifed. It's acrylic painted on board and eventually I gave it to my friend Mandy Mills.