Sunset, Tuesday, 9 March 2010

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

Fever and chills and I didn’t want to paint or do anything else, but felt absolutely fine while painting this, just for the duration. I witnessed the sunset in the company of two guys from rural Madison County who had delivered firewood and may have wondered why I kept looking over at the horizon. At that point we were out at the edge of a field evaluating a big red oak I’d been trying to cut down for at least five years, and they were good-naturedly giving me a hard time about my failure to do so. Apparently I did the right things but in the wrong order, and now any attempt to continue could kill one of us. They allowed as to how, although it would be quite an involved operation, it would be possible to climb to the top, lasso the tree with a rope, and pull it down with their truck. I noticed them thoughtfully scratching their chins as they contemplated the degree of difficulty of the procedure. I did not ask for a quote, at least not today.

Sunset, Monday, 8 March 2010

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

I hope you might almost be able to tell from the softening colors of the mountains and sky that we’re finally hearing the first tree frogs – “peepers” – singing in the evening.

Sunset, Sunday, 7 March 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Brightwood, Culpeper County, Va. Oil on linen, 16 x 20.

This was the third version of Sunday’s sunset that I sketched and more or less completely ‘got’ while we were on the road home from Westminster, Maryland, via Frederick and Leesburg. Ultimately I felt I had to get the “pink ray” that shot up on the left.

Sunset, Friday, 5 March 2010

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

Henry David Thoreau:

Unless you watch, you do not know when the sun goes down. It is like a candle extinguished without smoke. A moment ago you saw that glittering orb amid the dry oak leaves in the horizon and now you can detect no trace of it.

In our case we have contrails for smoke.

Update on Saturday, March 6, 2010 at 08:29AM by BVD

This probably wasn’t clear: I like contrails. 

Update on Saturday, March 6, 2010 at 08:33AM by BVD

And smoke, too, for that matter.

Sunset, Thursday, 4 March 2010

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

The sky ... the pied piper.

Sunset, Wednesday, 3 March 2010

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

I was making ice cream, as sunset approached, from peaches I had canned about 11 years ago. (I plan to have a small amount of the ice cream after I freeze it, just to test and make sure I don’t poison anyone but myself; but the peaches, canned with honey, seemed surprisingly good.) A blog being what it is (voracious), my mind wandered to whether there was any connection between the old peaches and tonight’s cold sunset.

So, in the name of sanity: No way is there any connection. Yes, I often think of how the horizon at sunset seems like a flowing stream of time, and yes, somewhere back there are the peaches of 1999, seamlessly connected with this moment. But if anyone refers to this painting as the peach sunset, it’s on them.