Sunset, Sunday, 27 September 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

Today I caught part of the new Ken Burns series, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea – I think we cable-less, Tivo-less people will want to rent this and make sure we get the whole thing.

I was struck by the following rhetorical question – or poetical question – from John Muir:

Who reports the works and ways of the clouds, those wondrous creations coming into being every day like freshly upheaved mountains?

Sunset, Saturday, 26 September 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

Out on a very wet seven-mile ramble with Flint the pound-found foxhound, even in, or especially in, the gray light I was seeing so many colors. (Flint meanwhile was more than doubling my mileage, chasing things I never saw and I’m not sure he saw, either.) Standing in the lonesome part of this place we call Abandon Alley – a wide swath of power line where you can see at least a mile of cut-over nothing in particular – with woods ranged along either side of a long, stepped descent to the river and an equally long rise to a blue-green field on the opposite height (strange, almost the exact color of oats in midsummer), I realized that if I were to try to name all the color variations I was seeing, it would go on forever – and I wouldn’t mind. Just naming variations on green and yellow would be enough – poplar yellow (or maybe that should be yellow poplar yellow), cedar green, distant patches sort of brown but actually dried weeds of a pinkish gold, and just at hand, clinging on a swaying head of deep goldenrod, a pale yellow moth. And so on.

But the best color encounter came later, in the middle of the woods. In that peculiar, even light of clouds and rain, I was stumped by the turning dogwood leaves – not yet the dark scarlet of mid-autumn, some were still green and some – a delicate shade of orange I realized I couldn’t describe. Couldn’t describe it then and I know I can’t describe it now without a little imaginative assistance from you. A fresh new bright pale orange with a subtle overtone of red and an undertone of something like cream. How was this happening?

I finally took a leaf – in fact, I ended up taking two, to look at a deeper variation on the theme. (To many native Virginians, although it’s – just – O.K. to take a dogwood leaf, if you break a branch or, God forbid, kill a tree ... you only hope nobody finds out.) And so I found the reason for my difficulty. On one side, the side that had been facing the light, each leaf was turning the familiar russet and almost violet red. But on the underside – still not penetrated with the red, the side facing me was a flat, neutral, almost colorless green. The effect was composite, from backlighted screens of scarlet and green. No wonder I couldn’t put a name to it. I do know that if they made a candy that soft orange color – like maybe a tropical fruit–flavored variety of Chuckles – it would be irresistible.

Rain all day – might have to turn the sky over to find the colors.

Sunset, Friday, 25 September 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

All day it’s been gray here – damp and drab. As it became apparent it was going to stay that way, I started almost to obsess about rebelling against the overcast and perhaps painting ‘blue clouds’. I had ‘blue clouds’ on the brain as I surveyed the horizon one more time and started to paint.

But what one has in mind and what comes out of the brush – out of real impulse rather than a mere idea – are often two very different things. I didn’t really get the radically blue clouds I had pictured and in fact started, after a layer of white, with sepia – a brown – almost everywhere. And then a gray made mostly from ultramarine blue, yellow ochre and the Gamblin mixture called brown-pink. And so on – not so much blue and not a departure, despite my ferment.

The ‘blue’ impulse did raise the issue of how much of an angle I might decide to take from any given night’s sky. Normally this wouldn’t matter at all and I wouldn’t even be talking about it except for a certain responsibility I feel, in painting this particular series, to be something of a painter of record. My hope was that if I did in fact paint solid blue clouds, they would somehow also work as an analog for the ‘pictorial’ sky. So that if September 25th were important to you and you wanted a print of the sunset, there would be a relationship between the image and the evening that not only I would see but you might recognize as well. I don’t know that this connection is absolutely necessary, but that’s my thought at the moment.

The question is no longer entirely academic, because I’ve just started to make reproductions of the daily sunsets available (here). The prints in this particular gallery are around 11 x 14 – I can’t make them larger at this point because of camera issues – but with a mat and frame I hope they work for many situations. As soon as I can, I’ll be offering larger prints and posters.

Sunset, Thursday, 24 September 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

It’s been steamy today, and my attention turns, down in front of my view of the sunset, to the huge circular garden in the back yard, which, as I’ve previously explained, has been neglected and left dormant this year – which actually means, going crazy with weeds this year. But not just your ordinary waist- and shoulder-high weeds – I mean jungle-like weeds – violacious weeds. (I love that word – encountered while proofing a medical journal, where it described a skin eruption. Scared me to death.) Pokeweed, of course – spectacular, almost tree-like pokeweed some nine feet tall, now a gorgeous toxic bright purple from stern to stems, hanging with the dark purple berries we painted our faces with as kids. Thistles. Yet another volunteer peach tree. New blackberry hedges. But the most prominent invader – literally an invasive species – ailanthus trees, three of them, at least 15 feet high. How something so widely despised would be called Tree of Heaven escapes me; around here it’s commonly known as Paradise Tree.

The southeast Asian origins of the ailanthus suit the day, and its jungle leaves make me think of the paintings of Henri Rousseau – yes, the one they called ‘Le Douanier’. What a beautiful painter. Alongside my setting sun (although mine is overtaken by nearby storms), Henri adds a lustrous silver moon. At the center of the garden, perhaps a savage nude with lionesses. The garden chokes with tropical vegetation. The Blue Ridge reverts to its ancient volcanic past and issues plumes of smoke.

Sunset, Wednesday, 23 September 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

The sun came out today and pretty much set everything straight, as we’d always suspected it could. For one of the first times this year, late morning and early afternoon saw the high blue sky and pure white clouds of midsummer. The Mexican guys cut the fields again, this time without having to inadvertently run over any rabbits, turtles or snakes. Myanmar was restored as Burma, and the people of Honduras got their president back. Antonin Scalia revealed all the secrets Dick Cheney had told him over shotguns. John and George came back to tour in support of the remastered box set. My parents called, as I expect yours did as well. The sun set, and every heart was at peace.

Sunset, Tuesday, 22 September 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Day 3 of the ‘Mostly Cloudy’ Sunset Hostage Standoff ... with rain.

Today’s the 12th anniversary of the first of the consecutive daily sunset paintings – 22 September 1997. Of course, today’s also the autumnal equinox, just as the 22nd was in 1997, the reason I had decided to start on that day.

I’d been painting sunsets and sunrises since 1995 and don’t remember any great deliberations, or any particular design or plan, behind the decision to try painting every day. I don’t think I understood, on any sort of conscious level, why I was doing it, which probably helps explain why, after I’d painted every sunset through the end of 1997 and then all of 1998, after New Year’s Day 1999, I stopped.

Even after starting again, on New Year’s Day 2006, I still don’t think I had any clear or explicit idea what the significance of this daily observance might be. I was painting largely on intuition.

You might say the paintings are a direct response to the days themselves. I painted the sunset because the sun was setting.