Orange and Its Wake (Sunset, Saturday, 28 August 2010)

William Van Doren, Orange and Its Wake (Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va.) Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

Sunset, Haze, and the Long Blue Cloud (Sunset, Friday, 27 August 2010)

William Van Doren, Sunset, Haze, and the Long Blue Cloud (Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va.) Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

On Getting Slapped Across the Face by a Pine Bough

The trees are in their branches, the sun in its rays. Bullfrogs and buntings are in their songs. The divinity we congratulate ourselves on having the faith to believe in, is obvious.

Writer’s Morning Prayer

As the light is parti-colored in patches, and I am parti-conscious in pieces, I ask for the same power that unifies the light to reconcile my patchwork thought.

August Rose (Sunset, Thursday, 26 August 2010)

William Van Doren, August Rose (Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va.) Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

Cloud in Front (Sunset, Wednesday, 25 August 2010)

William Van Doren, Cloud in Front (Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va.) Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

When the painting started, it was going to be about dark “shadow rays” fanning up from the horizon – shadows of clouds – paradoxically giving the impression of light rays between them. But they got increasingly brushed back as the painting developed, and it somehow became for me more or less about the cloud in front.