Enrique Martinez Celaya  Enrique Martínez Celaya (born June 9, 1964) is a contemporary American painter, sculptor, author and former scientist whose work has been exhibited and collected by major institutions around the world. He trained and worked as a physicist, completing all coursework for his doctorate, before devoting himself full-time to his artwork. He holds master's degrees in physics and fine arts and has authored books on art and philosophy as well as scientific articles. He is currently a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College, and the Provost Professor of Humanities and Arts at USC. Martínez Celaya was born on June 9, 1964, in Palos, Nueva Paz, Cuba. His family relocated to Madrid, Spain in 1972. While there, he took up drawing at the age of eight. In 1975, the family relocated again, this time to Puerto Rico. He initiated his formal training as an apprentice to a painter at the age of 12 and developed his early interest in writing and philosophy. In 1982 he enrolled at Cornell University. He graduated "magna cum laude" with a Bachelor of Science in Applied Physics and a minor in Electrical Engineering in 1986. He was selected as a Regent's Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and earned a Master of Science degree with a specialization in Quantum Electronics While there, he patented several laser devices. He later enrolled in the M.F.A. program at the University of California, Santa Barbara and graduated with highest honors in 1994. After graduation, he attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. Martínez Celaya uses familiar and accessible images such as a boy, a girl, a unicorn, birds, deer, a dog, a sunrise or a seascape pursue a deeper order of experience that lies beneath appearances and beyond our intellectual grasp that resembles moments of childhood astonishment and wonder at the world's radiance. His work draws from the prose of Jorge Luis Borges, Herman Melville, and Lev Tolstoy; the poetry of Paul Celan, Osip Mandelstam, Harry Martinson, and José Saramago; the philosophy of Schopenhauer, Martin Heidegger, Hegel, and Ludwig Wittgenstein; the paintings of Velasquez, Caspar David Friedrich, and Ferdinand Hodler; Kurt Schwitters's Hanover "Merzbau"; the social practice of Joseph Beuys and Paulo Freire; the films of Andrei Tarkovsky; and the music of Bach.