Sunset, Saturday, 12 December 2009

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

Clouds on the increase at sunset.

Yesterday I drove up and down western Fairfax County, Virginia, to Great Falls and back, and on the return saw some things about the view of the Blue Ridge I’d never fully noticed.

On the glamorously named Fairfax County Parkway, heading south, a bridge elevates the roadway in order to cross over Route 50, or, as the big green sign says, Lee Jackson Mem Hwy.

At a distance of some 40 or more miles, the view of the mountains has a completely different character than we see here, in most of these paintings, less than 15 miles away. From the parkway, the unobstructed vista shows a low blue wall stretching all the way across the horizon, across a significant portion of the state.

The view here (at Stony Point) is physical, natural, palpable and specific. There, it’s almost an abstraction – instead of particular things, more like seeing graphic elements in an atlas or an arrangement of symbols.

That’s very much the view I grew up with, and must have bonded with, until the age of five, from my grandfather’s and father’s dairy farm in Ryan (near Ashburn, east of Leesburg). In 1982, when I began a large painting that marked a revival of sorts for me (“Birthday,” viewable at the bio page), the very first thing I did was a profile of the Blue Ridge, from memory, or perhaps by heart, across the top – and I was in Los Angeles.

From where I was yesterday, the Blue Ridge appeared like a conceptual element of geography and history; the glories and tragedies of Virginia (which are mostly one and the same – for example, the aforementioned Lee and Jackson) align in some relationship to it. Instead of the particular ridges and summits we see here, I saw a panorama of colonial exploration coming up against the native range of the original Americans, the gallant Army of Northern Virginia and its disgraced cause, the substantial small towns and crossroads villages on this side and the Shenandoah Valley beyond, red clay and quartz and dogwood, rocky mountainside pastures, honeysuckle- and blackberry-studded fencelines of piedmont farms, broad shallow creeks and rivers curving east out of the woods – an illustrated and annotated map of my beautiful old Virginia.

Sunset, Friday, 11 December 2009

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

Not to get things totally confused – only just a little confused – the following refers to the song titled, depending on where you look, “Have I Told You Lately” and “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You,” written by Van Morrison. The former title helps distinguish Morrison’s 1989 song from the 1945 standard (“Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?”), which it resembles in outward form although not so much in essence.

In addition, the version that inspired me to write is the one Morrison does with The Chieftains, a performance with a lot less orchestral decor than the better-known record.

There’s a love that’s divine
And it‘s yours and it’s mine
And it shines like the sun
At the end of the day
We shall give thanks and pray to the one

I’m not sure if Van means “the one,” “the One” or “The One,” but – it’s all the same to me.

Where the song really kills comes right after this. Just like the old standard, the song opens with the title line, “Have I told you lately that I love you?” – in the usual from-me-to-you format. But at the end of this verse Morrison adds two words – barely noticeable, just there if you want to notice them – that connect back to, and transform, the title.

. . . At the end of the day
We shall give thanks and pray to the one
And say
Have I told you lately that I love you?

Sunset, Thursday, 10 December 2009

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

Clearing out, turning colder. A vaguely uneasy feeling that the more or less equal division we assume between earth and sky could be giving way to overwhelming space. Haze, a few little shreds of cloud, any color that indicates a substance of atmosphere, all welcome.

Sunset, Wednesday, 9 December 2009

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

The word of the day is something I encountered in “Mystification,” a crazy little story by Edgar Allan Poe. 

That he was unique appeared so undeniable, that it was deemed impertinent to inquire wherein the uniquity consisted.

(The story can be found online in a few places, all of which seem to share the defect of not showing italics.) 

Uniquity ... somehow sounds bad, as in “a den of uniquity.”

My spell check, no surprise, objects to the word. Webster’s doesn’t have it. However, it’s in a 1955 revision of The Oxford Universal Dictionary.

The story’s plot turns on characters intimidating, or seeking to intimidate, each other – to “mystify” – through the use of very arcane and particular mumbo-jumbo. It’s an appropriate device, since the story satirizes the very arcane and particular codes of dueling.

What this has to do with sunset ... not sure. Write it off, perhaps, as obliquity.

Sunset, Monday, 7 December 2009

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

The blurred moon rising last night in haze and cloud could be the same gray light inside the woods today, and for that matter almost one and the same with the streaks of cloud and dim sunlight above yesterday’s sunset. The torn-up black track of the jeep trail in the woods was left by deer hunters but reminds me of my late friend Uncle Tony’s tales of escaping, as an Austro-Hungarian officer in World War I, from a prison camp, then making his way across eastern Russia to his home in Hungary – staying for a time with Russian peasant villagers and working alongside them looking for truffles and mushrooms in the rich soil of the vast woods.

(More about the amazing Uncle Tony – as he was known – soon. Anton Lipthay was his name – direct descendant, I believe, of the celebrated general of the same name from the Napoleonic Wars, although I didn’t know enough to inquire about this while he and his relatives here were still living.)

Rising moon, setting sun, diffusing daylight. Trucks, hunters, truffles, mushrooms, escaped aristocrats. The sound of clumps of wet icy snow falling all at once from pine branches off in the middle of the woods comes across as possibly also belonging to the Mercedes station wagon, a hunter’s, I had seen earlier in the field, if it’s leaving on the muddy power line trail, but I can’t tell. Different sounds and lights and times merge, converging on whatever comes next.

Sunset, Sunday, 6 December 2009

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

With some snow on the ground, it’s finally turned fairly cold; all three cats stretched out near the wood stove (our only heat source) all day – Flint the foxhound keeping a respectful distance on the sofa. Since this site has been mentioning firewood-cutting almost every other day, I thought I’d show some of the results. This was the scene in December 2005, but there’s a remarkably similar-looking pile out on the porch right now.

William Theodore Van Doren. India ink and watercolor, 2005, approx. 8 x 10.

The quote from Thoreau was added when we used this sketch as a Christmas card.

(Inside, the card read “Warmth, Love, Cheer – Now and for the New Year.” The sketch is available as a print or a card at a new Imagekind gallery.)

Wherever you are, I hope you keep warm.