The Masterpiece — Part Six
By Joachim Heijndermans
The Artist cracked his back, then committed to a few stretches. His work tempo had slowed. A sip of water and a splash of it to the face did little to break the funk.
“Mmn,” the Artist grunted, staring at the image of the chair painted in the left corner of the canvas. Something about it was off, yet he couldn't put his finger on it. It just wasn’t working. Being stuck like this was a rare thing. He even questioned if it wasn’t better to start over on something new. When he turned away from his work, he finally saw it.
“Huh,” he muttered. “How did those get there?” he asked, referring to the many planets that had formed around his workplace. Now, had he taken more frequent breaks, perhaps he would have been able to see them take form, morphing from balls of iron to balls with volcanic soil to balls with fertile land and seas. From his point of view, they had come to be within the blink of an eye, even though it had taken many ages and a series of catastrophic mega-events for those worlds to come into existence.
The Artist sat back for a bit, looking at this new sight. There were several new colours that he was unaware had come to be, one of which seemed to be a new hue of a violet/blue mix, intertwined in a vivid dance that seemed to defy the laws of the spectrum each passing moment. He made a note to try and capture these, as he felt the stallion on the far right of the canvas would really pop out from the background in those new colors, which would create a nice piece of contrast with the mountain from which it bursts out of.
He took his brush and began mixing his colours, stopping from time to time to hold the wet brush up to the planets to compare the hues. He did this several times over until he was finally satisfied with the result, then applied his new colour to the canvas. With this spark of inspiration, his passion for the work was reinvigorated.
And thus, the Artist continued, ignoring the proton implosion bomb explosions overhead as the last battleships of the shattered Red Triumvirate charged headfirst into mutually assured destruction.
Joachim Heijndermans is a writer, artist, filmmaker, and SFWA member from the Netherlands. His work has been published in a great number of publications, featured on podcasts and adapted to television and film, including the Netflix animated series 'Love, Death & Robots'.
Copyright © 2025 Joachim Heijndermans