Moonstruck
A youth marked with a crescent moon, his face mottled in rose and magenta against a drifting lavender sky.
“Moonstruck” glows with a feverish, otherworldly light. A young man stares out from a wash of lavender and pearl, his skin broken into blooms of rose and magenta, a pale crescent moon painted onto his brow like a brand or a blessing.
Kevin Van Pelt pushes color far past description here, using it as pure emotion — the flushed cheeks, the red mouth, the bruised shadows beneath the eyes all speaking of some private intensity. The dark, swallowing collar anchors the face and throws it forward into the light.
The result is part portrait, part myth: a figure caught between the earthly and the symbolic, marked by the moon and lit from somewhere we can’t quite name. It is one of the boldest, most romantic pieces in the collection.
