Description
The Great Farewell by Ken Danby
26 1/2″ x 22″ – Paper Print Edition – Limited Edition of 9999. Signed by Ken Danby and numbered. Facsimile signature of Wayne Gretzky embossed in gold.
32 1/2″ x 27″ – Giclee Canvas Edition – Limited to 199. Signed by Ken Danby and numbered. All canvas prints are personally signed by Wayne Gretzky.
“The Great Farewell’ is the perfect title because it’s so appropriate to my memories of the great response of the fans at my final game. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.” – Wanye Gretzky
Mathematics, Astronomy and Curious Coincidences:
The painting’s background marks the exact time and date of Gretzky’s final moments on the ice – 6:12:45 pm, April 18th, 1999 – by the depiction of the early evening sky at that precise moment. Note: The sky is unique every night. When viewed from a given place at the same time on different nights, the stars and the planets will never appear in the exact the same positions. Of course, the stars and planets were not yet fully visible at 6:12 pm, since the sun still remained well above the horizon (it didn’t completely set until 8:05 pm). Nevertheless, they were there, relentlessly in motion as always, like an enormous timepiece overhead – and the artist simply used his artistic license to emphasize this phenomenon. Therefore, this sky is like a clock-calendar, frozen in time at 6:12:45 pm on April 18th, 1999. Gretzky left the ice for the last time at 6:13 pm. For what it’s worth, the hours and minutes of the time 6:12 pm, when added as individual numbers (6+1+2) equal 9, and when the digits in the seconds are added separately (4+5), they also equal 9. Therefore, 6:12:45 pm can be interpreted as 99.
While creating Wayne’s portrait, Ken Danby continually discovered intriguing symbolism and alignments between sky maps and his painting, as well as repeated occurrences of numbers 9 and 99 – so much so that he was led to create a book to document the process.
