‘Talking To You’ by Genevieve ‘Vevie’ Lykes Dimmitt Credit: Jennifer Ring / Creative Loafing Tampa Bay
Tampa Bay-based artist Genevieve “Vevie” Lykes Dimmitt lost her son, Lawrence Hundley Dimmitt IV, to suicide in 2017, but she still speaks to him through her art.
Her art show, “Windows Letting in Light, Prayers for Lawrence,” runs at FloridaRAMA in St. Petersburg through Monday, Nov. 10. Proceeds from artwork sales benefit Love IV Lawrence, a donor-advised fund created in her son’s memory to promote mental health awareness and end the stigma surrounding suicide.
This Saturday, Nov. 8, from 6 p.m.-8 p.m., Vevie joins Love IV Lawrence representatives for a public talk on art and mental health.
What do you do after a family member dies by suicide and the press starts calling?
That’s the question the Dimmitt family faced in August of 2017 when Lawrence Hundley Dimmitt IV, Operating Partner of Dimmitt Chevrolet in Clearwater died at 32 years old.
Lawrence Hundley Dimmitt IV Credit: Courtesy / Genevieve Dimmitt
The loss left the family stunned. Lawrence’s mother, Vevie, and sister, FloridaRAMA Founder and CEO Liz Dimmitt, describe Lawrence as a sort of golden boy—cute, popular, friendly, fun, thoughtful, a great outdoorsman, a successful businessman, a kind mentor to his colleagues at Dimmitt Chevrolet, a protective brother, a supportive friend, a good neighbor and a loving son.
Lawrence’s friend, Daniel Singer, describes him as one of the most engaging people you’d ever meet—friendly to everyone, the life of the party, an overall outstanding human being.
Everything appeared to come easily for Lawrence, but beneath the golden boy façade, he struggled internally.
“I think we all knew he had his ups and downs,” Liz told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “And that summer of 2017, he was in a hard place, but we didn’t know that we were there.”
“He was clearly battling a lot of this stuff behind closed doors,” says Singer.
Suicide is rarely expected, yet shockingly prevalent.
According to the World Health Organization, more than 720,000 people die by suicide every year. And for every suicide, there are more people who have attempted suicide. Earlier this year, Tampa Bay lost beloved historian, author and archivist Andy Huse.
“It’s an epidemic in the world today—so many people are struggling with it,” Liz told CL.
Despite the shock, the Dimmitts didn’t have much time to grieve. It wasn’t long before members of the press discovered the police report and began contacting the surviving family members.
Not knowing what to say, Lawrence’s surviving siblings deferred to their mother, Vevie.
Liz recalls specifically asking her mother, “What do you want us to say?”
“We’re not pretending this didn’t happen to our family,” Vevie told her kids.
“I think I just knew that I had to tell the truth,” Vevie reflects on that moment. “That we could only get through it if we told the truth.”
As far as she was concerned, there was no other option. Once they told the truth, the Dimmitts were left alone to try and make sense of it.
How do you make sense of it? You go through their things, you talk to your friends, family, neighbors, doctors, your priest. You make art.
Eight years later, Vevie still wonders if any of Lawrence’s many concussions played a role.
On the day of his death, Lawrence had left a single file out on his desk—a class action lawsuit referencing concussions in high school football players. Lawrence suffered one such concussion himself as a high school senior. At the beginning of his first football game of the season, Lawrence was carried off the field on a stretcher.
The coach told Vevie that her son was fine, not to worry about it. But after the game, she discovered that he’d been lying there with a concussion the entire game, practically unconscious. Vevie took her son to a doctor who told her, “he’s had a concussion, and he shouldn’t have any more, but there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“But I know he had more,” she says while acknowledging, the simple fact that, “it’s not like we can ever figure it out.”
How do you move forward after a death changed that changes the lives of so many around the person?
Liz Dimmitt, who happened to be in Florida at the time of Lawrence’s death, never moved back to New York City, where she’d just purchased a new apartment with her husband-to-be. Instead, the couple settled in Florida, and Liz started running Dimmitt Chevrolet.
She’d always wanted to have a big art project, and Lawrence’s death reminded her that life is too short to put off one’s dreams. So in 2021, she established Fairgrounds—now FloridaRAMA—in a St. Pete warehouse called The Factory.
Lawrence’s Tampa friends approached the family, wanting to do something.
“We didn’t necessarily know exactly what it would be or what form it might take,” Dan Singer, from Tampa, told CL.
But their good friend and mentor, Martin Borrell, offered guidance, and Lawrence’s Tampa friends established the foundation, Love IV Lawrence, with the Dimmitts in 2017 to help change the conversation around mental health, depression and suicide. The foundation supports several Tampa Bay organizations doing important work in mental health, granting about $100,000 in annual support.
“Ultimately, our mission is to save lives,” Singer told CL.
Genevieve Dimmitt continued to make art, but its nature changed.
“As an artist, it forced me to paint from the deepest parts of myself,” Vevie told CL. “I try to connect with him, to talk to him, to tell him things that were left unsaid. I no longer paint to make something beautiful. I paint to survive, to understand and to stay connected.”
Vevie’s paintings are covered in messages to her late son—all the things she wishes she’d told him. The words often overlap to the point of illegibility—there are so many things left unsaid.
The last time Vevie saw Lawrence, the family was together in North Carolina around the time of the 2017 total solar eclipse.
She was setting the table and trying to serve dinner when Lawrence noticed a series of paintings she’d left leaning against the wall and asked her, “Where do you get your ideas?”
“And I didn’t really give him an answer,” says Vevie. “That was my opportunity to talk with him and communicate, and I missed it.”
The answers soon found their way into her artwork, starting with “The Eclipse of 2017,” and then in others. Letters swoop around objects that remind Vevie of Lawrence—smashed automobile glass, shark’s teeth, bottle caps, rocks and shells.
The works currently hanging in FloridaRAMA Gallery are just a portion of the paintings through which Genevieve Dimmitt processed her son’s death.
“There’s a huge amount of work that came out of this,” Liz told CL.
Through the tangle of unspoken words, one thing is always clear: love.
Rummaging through old papers as she packed up to make the trip from North Carolina back to Florida once again, Vevie found the last Mother’s Day card Lawrence ever gave her. The handmade card carried the following message:
Dearest Mama, Happy Mother’s Day. I wish you happiness, comfort, enlightenment, and peace on this special day and always and forever in the future. You have earned it. You are an inspirational and uplifting force for your children and for everyone in your life. Your spirit is warm, vibrant and encouraging. Thank you for instilling your positive energy with us. Thank you for being an incredible person. Thank you for your love. The love and respect that I have for you is equally as strong. It is eternal and it is unyielding. You mean the world to me, mama; you are my world. You have made me the man that I am today. I love you. Happy Mother’s Day.
Years later, it reads like a goodbye note.
“If I were painting today, I’d tell him how much that note meant to me, and how much he meant to me,” Vevie told CL. “I’d ask more questions.”
“As an artist, it forced me to paint from the deepest parts of myself.”
For families affected by suicide, the intrusive questions never end.
“At the end of day, when you look back, maybe there are things you could have done,” Singer told CL. But this requires knowledge and tools that most people don’t have.
That’s why Love IV Lawrence has invested heavily in Mental Health First Aid—a program that trains people to recognize when a loved one may be at risk for suicide. Through longstanding partnerships with MHFA instructor Stoney Dvornik, Directions for Living and Safe & Sound Hillsborough, the organization has helped certify more than 7,000 people in Mental Health First Aid.
Suicide is more prevalent than most realize, and with the world the way it is today, these tools and resources are more important than ever.
“If you haven’t been directly affected by suicide, someone you know has been directly affected by suicide,” Singer told CL. “They may or may not want to talk about it, but it’s just so pervasive out there today.”
“We’ve learned so much more through having Love IV Lawrence,” Liz told CL. “You have to have the hard conversations and ask hard questions…we didn’t have those tools in our toolbox at the time.”
‘Windows To Heaven III’ by Genevieve ‘Vevie’ Lykes Dimmitt Credit: Photo by Jen Ring / Creative Loafing Tampa Bay
Detail of ‘Windows To Heaven III’ by Genevieve ‘Vevie’ Lykes Dimmitt Credit: Jennifer Ring / Creative Loafing Tampa Bay
Detail of ‘Windows To Heaven III’ by Genevieve ‘Vevie’ Lykes Dimmitt Credit: Jennifer Ring / Creative Loafing Tampa Bay
Detail of ‘Windows To Heaven III’ by Genevieve ‘Vevie’ Lykes Dimmitt Credit: Jennifer Ring / Creative Loafing Tampa Bay
Detail of ‘Windows to Heaven III’ by Genevieve ‘Vevie’ Lykes Dimmitt Credit: Jennifer Ring / Creative Loafing Tampa Bay
Detail of ‘Windows to Heaven III’ by Genevieve ‘Vevie’ Lykes Dimmitt Credit: Jennifer Ring / Creative Loafing Tampa Bay
‘The Eclipse of 2017 Your Goodbye’ by Genevieve ‘Vevie’ Lykes Dimmitt Credit: Jennifer Ring / Creative Loafing Tampa Bay
‘Light of My Life’ by Genevieve ‘Vevie’ Lykes Dimmitt Credit: Jennifer Ring / Creative Loafing Tampa Bay
Genevieve ‘Vevie’ Lykes Dimmitt’ ‘Windows Letting In Light, Prayers for Lawrence’ installation at FloridaRAMA in St. Petersburg, Florida, up through Nov. 10, 2025. Credit: Jennifer Ring / Creative Loafing Tampa Bay
Genevieve ‘Vevie’ Lykes Dimmitt’ ‘Windows Letting In Light, Prayers for Lawrence’ installation at FloridaRAMA in St. Petersburg, Florida, up through Nov. 10, 2025. Credit: Jennifer Ring / Creative Loafing Tampa Bay
Genevieve ‘Vevie’ Lykes Dimmitt’ ‘Windows Letting In Light, Prayers for Lawrence’ installation at FloridaRAMA in St. Petersburg, Florida, up through Nov. 10, 2025. Credit: Jennifer Ring / Creative Loafing Tampa Bay
‘Gold Arabic Painting’ by Genevieve ‘Vevie’ Lykes Dimmitt Credit: Jennifer Ring / Creative Loafing Tampa Bay
Detail of ‘Family Heart’ by Genevieve ‘Vevie’ Lykes Dimmitt Credit: Jennifer Ring / Creative Loafing Tampa Bay
‘Faith Hope Love’ series by Genevieve ‘Vevie’ Lykes Dimmitt Credit: Courtresy / FloridaRAMA
Detail from ‘Faith Hope Love’ by Genevieve ‘Vevie’ Lykes Dimmitt Credit: Jennifer Ring / Creative Loafing Tampa Bay
David Price and Genevieve Lykes Dimmit Nature of Healing Gallery Photos Credit: Courtesy / FloridaRAMA
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This article appears in Nov. 6 – 12, 2025.
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