Hermitage of Sagunto 2014

Alejandro Cabeza's painted this Hermitage of Sagunto with brushstrokes so immediate you can feel the sun on your skin. I can imagine him standing there, squinting, trying to capture the essence of the place, not just the shapes but the feeling. Look at how the white paint is daubed on, thick and juicy, to suggest the bright walls against the muted tones of earth and foliage. It’s like he’s wrestling with the light, trying to pin it down. There is a kind of shorthand here, a way of saying so much with so little. He probably had to make decisions on the fly, responding to the changing light, just like any painter working en plein air. Painters do this all the time – have a conversation with the canvas, where each mark is a response to the last. And then we, the viewers, get to eavesdrop on that conversation, piecing together our own stories.