Tope walls reap life, warmth, joy, and optimism from those who toil within. Spartan accommodations drape the tiny space in muted tones. The only source of inspiration: an open window, a tiny portrait of life. The painter squints into the sun, its pure light searing his eyes despite the straw hat. Raw paint-stained fingers clutch a palate as a brush hesitates before sprinting into wild splashes. Manic eyes flick from painting to subject, omitting the bars on the window. Yellowed lips crack under anxiety-ridden bites.
Outside waves of heat radiate off the fields, hazing the distant ochre mountains in a pastel green sky. Cicadas scream of long summer days as tanned-skinned reapers swing scythes in wide arcs against endless shafts of wheat.
The fields. It’s those damn fields. The yellow in his mind is as vibrant as a sunflower soaked in egg yolk, but the paint on the canvas is a ghost. The oppression of the walls bleeds the will dry, sapping every pigment. He curses, squeezing paint from the tube to empty it. Yellow drips down his shirt, staining his being.
Below, workers mop sweaty brows with handkerchiefs and pass around cigarettes. The painter mimics their action, coating hand-rolled paper with thick saliva.
Grey smoke bridges the space between painter and creation, obfuscating the struggle in ugly yellow fields. Tobacco fingers trace the reapers’ curved backs, mirroring stocks of grain, their humanity blended into the flora. The shafts are cut, stacked, and forgotten in a never-ending cycle. Toil transfers from field to mind to canvas, the torment manifest in his paint.
He sees them. He sees the men. They are a part of him even as he is apart from them.
Years after his death, the painter is a legend; his art clamored for by museums. People stop and stare. No one sees the suffering of the reapers. Their hearts bleed only for the tortured genius of the painter and his resplendent yellows.
