Whyte paid her subjects for their time but allowed no primping. She wanted to capture the reality of their labor, as she does in Disciple, where Miss Thelma, a crab picker in Hacks Neck, Virginia, swiftly picks and sorts the meat from a day’s catch (watercolor on paper, 21 3/4 by 19 1/4 inches, 2009).
For Fried Herring, Whyte traveled to Jamesville, North Carolina, to a fish shack that’s only open a few weeks out of the year wh
Trap, a portrait of third-generation crabber Algernon “Algie” Varn in Pin Point, Georgia, who recently had to give up his business on Moon River (watercolor on paper, 21 3/4 by 19 1/4 inches, 2008)
For Pilgrimage, Whyte hired a funeral band in Overton, Florida, to perform at a cemetery (watercolor on paper, 39 by 48 inches, 2009). Opposite page: Hull, wooden boat builder, Bayou La Batre, Alabama, watercolor on paper, 37 by 29 inches, 2008
Whyte rented a former mill worker’s cottage in Simpsonville, South Carolina, to complete the studies and sketches from her trave
