Entries in Albemarle County (46)

Thursday
Aug062009

Sunset, Thursday, 6 August 2009

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

So I’m chopping some really potent onions from Integral Yoga, and this doesn’t usually happen but tears are flooding down my face, the sunset (meaning the image I will want to paint) is happening unexpectedly early and is one of the strongest sunsets it seems like we’ve had in weeks, and the iPod has decided to throw down one of Don McLean’s major I’m-killing-you-softly ballads (“Crossroads,” as it happens), but I’m actually laughing because the tears have nothing to do with the beautiful sunset, or the song, or even with the following:

Oh, I’m scared of the middle place
Between light and nowhere.

                        “Hope There’s Someone” – Antony & The Johnsons

 

The sun goin’ down, boy
Dark gon’ catch me here.

                        “Cross Road Blues” (Take 2) – Robert Johnson

Wednesday
Aug052009

Sunset, Wednesday, 5 August 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

I guess, having written about sumac, of all things, which probably only a handful of people in the world care about – none of whom read this blog – I’m forced to keep writing about it, just to get my story straight.

Turns out that I was wrong twice (and counting?). I was wrong from the age of 12, let’s say, until last week, while I assumed that the sumac around here was staghorn sumac. O.K., no disgrace, I think I got the idea from my Boy Scouts manual, which was probably written by Yankees. (Staghorn is what they have.) 

But I should have paid more attention to detail when I said that what we have, in profusion down in the Scrubby Field, is scarlet sumac. I think I liked the name. It isn’t. Apparently, it’s what they call shining sumac, or something close to it.

This I know because the leaves have ‘wings’ – as seen here:

The stem has a narrow band of green leaf running up along it, from leaflet to leaflet – those are wings. And the leaflets don’t have stalks. Botany is tough.

And it’s probably not over. I’ve previously described the fruit as clusters turning from the color of gold grapes to two shades of magenta. Well, maybe that’s only the female plants. The field is also filled with what looks like the same sumac, except the fruit clusters are flowering much more yellow – each flower with (I think) five bright gold stamens. We’ll see how both types of plants turn out.

Perhaps the only way I can ever make all of this up to you is to paint the field at some point.

On a different subject entirely, I made an interesting musical discovery tonight while cooking a sauce, for gnocchi, of zucchini, garlic and tomato. The first 67 or 89 times I played Bob Dylan’s “Mississippi,” from Love And Theft, I was just glued to it; it pretty much killed me. But then, maybe because my frame of mind was brightening a bit, the next 23 or 31 times I played it, it seemed kind of oppressive. Great, of course, but a little oppressive.

What I discovered while cooking is that if you sing along with Bob, and sing around him – almost doesn’t matter how – and sing the lines more loosely than he does, perhaps making them a little longer, it seems to transform the experience. Makes it like a new song. Of course, the people who know “Mississippi” may be the very same ones who care about sumac. 

Tuesday
Aug042009

Sunset, Tuesday, 4 August 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Waited and watched as muggy August ambiguity rallied color.

Monday
Aug032009

Sunset, Monday, 3 August 2009

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

I wrote in my sketch that the sky above the clouds was ‘colorless’. In Virginia there’s a ‘colorless’ steam blue of summer and a ‘colorless’ steel blue of winter. Colorless colors, not radically different in composition, just in temperature. Tonight the clouds are largely cerulean blue, a pigment that, in keeping with the name, many people use for the heavens. In this case, heaven has collected in cloud, flying along with the sun.

Sunday
Aug022009

Sunset, Sunday, 2 August 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Saturday
Aug012009

Sunset, Saturday, 1 August 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Today’s the birthday of Washington, D.C., photographer Del Ankers, my uncle, who died in May 2008. Del’s remarkable life and even more remarkable personality are so difficult to convey in a short space, I thought I’d cheat and refer you to the obituary in the Washington Post by Matt Schudel and the appreciation, also in the Post, by Lauren Wilcox. 

If you want to go straight for the entertainment values, Del’s work as a film maker included commercials made with the earliest versions of Jim Henson’s Muppets, and these can be sampled here and here, among other places on the web.

I’ve also posted a few photos and anecdotes related to Del, starting here.

In a nice bit of numerical and family symmetry, since Del was my uncle and would be 93, today is also the birthday of the wonderful Amy Pine of Durham, N.C., who is 39. Friends would drink turpentine for their Amy Pine, that’s how great she is. Happy Birthday.