Fog in the City

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Here is the strangest incident that has happened to me in my life. One day I decided to paint the kitchen a different color, it was a drab gray and I wanted to paint it a bright yellow. Even though I was renting the apartment I decided to do a very careful job at my own expense. I cleaned everything patched and sanded the walls, and I even disconnected and moved the radiators so that I could paint behind them.

It was Saturday, my day off. I set to work and worked for several hours. Finally, when I was about half done, I took a break and sat down to drink some coffee and read the paper.

The apartment had three rooms on the ground floor, a kitchen, a living room, and a dining room, these three rooms were lined up in a row and connected by central archways. To read the paper and drink my coffee I sat in the living room, from there I could look through the dining room into the kitchen and admire my paint job. So I sat there drinking my coffee and reading the paper and occasionally looking up at the yellow kitchen. But at one point when I looked up the kitchen had completely disappeared. The living room and dining room were intact but where the kitchen had been there was simply nothing at all.

My first reaction to this situation was complete panic, there was only one possible explanation for the disappearance of the kitchen, which was that while having coffee I had gone out of my mind. I got out of my chair and approached the kitchen doorway convinced that I was about to confirm my own insanity.

What I found when I got to the kitchen was that the heat had come on and the kitchen had filled with steam from the disconnected radiators that I had neglected to turn off. It was just that kind of cool September day, when the heat comes on for the first time after a long summer.

This little painting on paper measures 4” x 5.5”. It is painted on paper prepared with a few coats of gesso, and acrylic paint. It is signed on the front along the bottom edge, Richard Britell September 6, 2001.