Amid Westbury Van Gogh exhibit, Army vet teaches comrades painting as way to cope with trauma

As projections of paintings by Vincent Van Gogh surrounded them, John Melillo, an Army Vietnam veteran and artist, stood before seven fellow disabled veterans Wednesday and coached them as they worked on small, 8-inch by 10-inch black canvases set against white wooden easels.

Melillo, of Eastport, who has used art to cope with his post-traumatic stress, told them there was nothing to fear, whether they had ever painted or not. The black canvas and white paint was to make things, he said, "as simple as possible. There's infinite possibilities. It's what we make out of it."

The assignment for the veterans, Melillo said, was to make trees out of blotches of white and black paint, with shades of gray added for texture. He showed them how he'd done such a painting himself, which his students used as a reference, showing them how to make different strokes with various paint brushes.

The painting lesson took place against the backdrop of the "Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience" at Samanea New York in Westbury, which attracted scores of people this day. The veterans worked in a back corner. Melillo said Van Gogh, the master postimpressionist, was his favorite artist.

Melillo's artwork as been exhibited at New York University and at the Southampton Cultural Center, and he's a member of the Art League of Long Island. 

Brennen Wilson, national touring general manager for the "Beyond Van Gogh" exhibit, said he invited Melillo to do his painting class after meeting him at "our opening VIP night." Melillo, Wilson said, "told me of his journey with PTSD and him being a Vietnam veteran. And I just lost my father [Brett Wilson] last August and he was a Vietnam veteran … so I just really wanted to work with them to get this done for such an important cause."

Donna Zephrine of Bay Shore, an Army veteran who served as a mechanic in two deployments to Iraq in 2003 and 2004, said she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. As she followed Melillo's instructions, Zephrine said, "I like it. I never did something like this. I would like to keep it up."

Melillo, accompanied by his daughter Beth Melillo, said in an interview he found art late in life. And it has helped him deal with PTSD that had invaded his life after he retired in 2015. This was long after he had served in Vietnam in 1971 to 1972, where he said he commanded a military police unit in Long Binh, Vietnam.

"I got out of the service. I went to work in Manhattan, down toward Wall Street," Melillo said. He was involved in a number of businesses over a 45-year career, starting companies in printing and marketing, among others. "I didn't know until I retired that I had a problem. I started getting nightmares and day-mares. I didn't know what to do. I realized that all that running and all that activity was to mask some of the things I had seen in Vietnam. I went to the VA and they … diagnosed me with a severe case of PTSD."

He enrolled in art schools and "immersed myself" in art to help him cope. "Painting for me was the third act in my life. It was like a rebirth."

By Olivia Winslow

olivia.winslow@newsday.com@newsollie