21 march 2025, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2682: painter of dreams

Image by Leni from Pixabay

“Well, I mean, my grandfather is a billionaire, but people don't get that even a billionaire can't make a sky, and all of them can't even paint one.”

Budding visual artist eleven-year-old Velma Trent was painting the field across from the homes her grandfather had made available to her and her neighbors for what she thought was a vacation … really, Mr. Thomas and Mrs. Velma Stepforth had brought their grandsons Vertran (9) and Tom (16) and were hanging out with their daughter Mrs. Melissa, son-in-law Sgt. Vincent, and grandchildren Melvin (21), Vanna (almost 18), Velma (11), Milton (9) , and Gracie (8) when a voluntary evacuation became necessary.

But nobody had burdened the little Trents and Stepforth, or their seven little Ludlow neighbors, so Velma was just talking with Ludlow friends Eleanor (11), and Andrew (11) about life and art.

“It's like you buy paintings, but you can't buy the ability to see one on the canvas,” Eleanor said.

“Well, you can't even buy eyes to see the sky,” Velma said, “and then the sky and the wind and the plants never hold still for a painting, so you gotta have memory and imagination to capture a moment to paint even if you are painting real life.”

“What else do you paint?” Andrew said.

“I am a painter of dreams and daydreams, too,” Velma said. “Those tree paintings that represent our families that I did came from dreaming of a tree I saw that has a top like Mama Velma's natural, just green, and that's kind of how that all started.”

“Robert just loves that you painted him as a little red-leaf plum with sunlight coming through it for his blond hair,” Eleanor said. “You know how Rob loves red!”

“Yeah, when he comes and paints with me, there are a lot of different kinds of red trees with purple auras in blue skies because he doesn't know to let anything dry first, and it's actually kinda pretty and good way to do a soft-focus horizon with maybe a little fog – you just kind of let the green blur a little into the blue and the blue into the green,” Velma said.

On his porch, Col. H.F. Lee was working in his journal … he did not always write, but sometimes drew, and on this day he had gotten out his color pencils … his two cousins Eleanor and Andrew with Velma, standing at the nearly completed painting of the field that was in the background, were his subject.

“I feel like you don't even know all the things that you can do when you are at peace enough to do them,” Mrs. Maggie Lee said as she brought her husband some lemonade before sitting down in the porch chair by him. “Also you are super cute in these tropical shirts – I like this super-chill mode.”

“Well, the little ones are on vacation, and there is no need to blow our voluntary evacuation's cover,” the colonel said, with a smile. “And, a man like me who wants to keep the peace had best fill his time with peaceful things.”

“Sounds good to me,” Mrs. Lee said, and gave a big sigh and went on to take a nap in the sunshine.

“You are on vacation too, Maggie,” her husband purred as he put the finishing touches on his drawing, “and so I am going to think of the Lord and you and not do an emergency evacuation from life of the people who would have gotten you and all these here killed because they don't care if that sinkhole swallows a neighborhood and the flood washes out our cul-de-sac so long as they make money until the last day. Art therapy is life-saving … people do not know and it is good that they don't!”