Nguyen Dinh Dang was born in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 1958. He began drawing at age five and became an outstanding student. He hoped to become a professional painter but the Vietnam war and lack of painting materials restricted his work and made it difficult for Dang to pursue a living as a painter. This did not dampen Dang's passion for painting but the war led him to pursue a career in science.
Dang graduated from the Moscow State University in 1982. He received his Ph.D in nuclear theory in 1985, and his doctor of physics and mathematics sciences in 1990 at the same university. He went to Japan in 1994 as a research fellow and joined RIKEN (the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research) in 1995. Currently, he's an Accelerator Research Scientist at RIKEN's Heavy-Ion Nuclear Physics Laboratory.
For the past two decades, Dang's painting has shifted from impressionism to surrealism, whose most eminent representative, Salvador Dali, remains one of Dang's favorites. Once he gets an idea, he spends nights and weekends painting. A self-taught painter, Dang believes it is not important to explain the literal context of any artwork. "In the creative process of both art and science, the most important thing is intuition. You feel something intuitively. You cannot explain how it comes to you," he says.
Clair de Lune
The Echo of Time
The Silent Piano
Portrait of photographer Benjamin Lee
Entrance
The exit
Memory
Ascension