Afternoon, Repeated

Pablo Arrieta painted his kitchen at the same hour every day for a year. Four in the afternoon, when the sun comes in low across the table and the walls turn orange. This canvas is the last of them, and the brightest.

By the end of the year he had stopped looking at the kitchen. The cups, the window and the chair are still there, but they have turned into blocks of colour, each one pushed a little further than the day before.

Up close the paint is thick and fast, laid on with a wide brush and left alone. From across the room it settles into a single afternoon, the kind you remember without knowing why.

The other paintings from the year are in private collections across Spain. This is the only one in a museum, and it hangs where the afternoon light reaches it.