Spinning Pins

The painter has become at least as interested in the question of time as he is in the question of space. He has painted bare trees behind the house only to foliate them later. He has put in a certain worker three different times—carrying water, scything grass, chopping wood—and with each new version has erased the last: How can the same man be doing three tasks at once? Yet the man does do all these things in one day.

If the mural’s to be an image of only one possible moment, there are many tasks that will go undepicted, and many animals that will be hidden. Light from the windows in the dining room moves over the unfinished mural, from grey to gold to white and back again.