And, that’s about as much Charles Darwin as I’m going to quote right now. My point is that an awful lot of good people are born with “white” skin and doing them justice in the form of art requires a lot of attention to the fact that it isn’t all one color any more than “black” skin is uniformly black or brown or beige or gold. I am told by dermatologists that melanin can travel. That is to say, that it can pool or disperse, depending on what part of the body is exposed to sunlight for prolonged periods and can even react to blows upon the body.
White skin, or skin without a lot of melanin to get in the way, has the additional ability to reveal the pooling of blood corpuscles beneath its surface. It can “blush”.
All of this has come into play to one degree or another in painting Will Hamlin’s wedding gift (for, I’m pretty sure one of us, either his dad or I will give it to him) because putting them both in the same picture points up the fact that they have relatively different complexions considering that they are father and son. Rick has told me on more than one occasion that he has an Italian grandfather (or, is it mother?) And it shows. He has this marvelous ability to pick up the sun very quickly before almost anyone else at St. Michael’s.
His side of the canvas went very quickly; I would say, a day at the most before he emerged from a swirl of broad brush strokes evoking his angular, furrowed features in a near permanent state of joy.
His son, by contrast, had to be teased out and I’m still not sure I have him. The palette is subtler and the road map a lot less delineated by care and worry. Pigment had to be layered one on top of the other like individual transparencies. Not easy to do with oil paint.