I painted this portrait of our son, Peter, during a hurricane when the power was out across our area. At the time, I was recovering from a serious injury and confined to a wheelchair. Peter had come down to Florida to help us through that difficult period.
He had grown a nice full beard, which gave me an idea. I draped a sheet around him like a cloak and asked him to pose as the Apostle Peter writing his first epistle. He held a pencil in his hand to stand in for a quill, and I placed a rolling pin on the table to represent an ancient scroll. We lit a few candles to create that warm, flickering candlelight glow you see in the painting.
Later, I ordered a replica of a first-century oil lamp, the kind that would have been used in the Apostle Peter’s time, to make the scene historically accurate.
In essence, this is a portrait of our son Peter posing as the Apostle Peter, captured in the moment he writes the powerful words of 1 Peter 4:7: “The end of all things is at hand.”
This biblical phrase points to the imminent return of Christ and the final judgment. The Apostle Peter urges believers to be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of their prayers. He calls Christians to remain vigilant, focused on God’s will, and to live with a spirit of charity and service toward one another. Far from being a distant event, the “end of all things” is presented as a present reality that should shape how we live calling us to spiritual readiness and attentiveness to God’s purposes.
The underpainting was executed using a grey-green verdaccio ten-value color palette, while the final overpainting was completed entirely with the ten-value flesh palette.
The palette for the flesh and the robe are on carousel below
