In A Florida Man (At Sunset), I tried to capture not the caricature, but the contradiction—the tenderness beneath bravado, the myth turned mortal. Bathed in the saturated hues of a late Gulf Coast sky, the subject’s face is sculpted by light and shadow in coral, azure, ochre, and flame. It’s a portrait of heat: not just the Florida sun, but something internal—rage, longing, resilience, or maybe just the truth beneath the tan.

With piercing eyes and a jaw set against the chaos of color, this man stands as both archetype and individual. The paint moves across his features like wind off the water: bold, layered, uncontained. The background is pure atmosphere—flat and luminous, like a sun-bleached sky before the storm rolls in.

He’s not wrestling an alligator. He’s wrestling himself.