The Original

Sunlight on metal, on the car roof, a second sun. Then a third, not as bright, on the hood. Another – you can’t see – on the grass beyond the car. And another underground. And another and another, on a line through the earth. There are no reflections, only repetitions. Multiplications. Manifestations of the original.

Sunset, Sunday, 9 May 2010

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

Co-Creation

The collected notes and notebooks of decades were with me out on the slate floor of the porch in the sun – a couple of stacks of writings and drawings, ideas and outlines, in every sort of form, from the oft-mentioned Moleskine notebooks to CVS Chunky Pads to sleek Apica books to notes written on the backs of check carbons (I have a lot of those). (Folded into thirds they fit in my jeans pocket on walks.) Forming a third unit or stack of sorts, I had with me for diversion a volume of Proust I’ve almost finished and one of John Hart (unopened – I have no idea).

I was immediately joined by our two female cats. Pi, the young one, got hold of a red file folder filled with recently excavated ancient notes and started biting the edges of papers and pushing the folder all around the porch. Lily, blind, beautiful and recently turned 18, found a way to recline against one of the piles of notes and the books, while Pi ceased her labors and stretched belly-up behind the other pile. I sat at the edge of the porch with my back to one of the posts, facing the sun. Lily and Pi, who’ve recently suffered incursions by a local feral tomcat, seemed to relax with me positioned between them and the yard.

I had felt on the verge of something, which was why I had the notes out there in the first place, but couldn’t bring myself to move anything. I sat for as long as I could in the sun, petting the two, then left them the books and my notes. The great synthesis, if there is one, can wait.

Sunset, Saturday, 8 May 2010

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

I had to remind myself not to get trapped into trying to “paint what I see” (whatever that could possibly mean), but also to account for the west wind just coming around to the north, and the day cooling down with a high lifting sky oddly like a summer evening at the beach, and the million and one things you can’t know with your eyes.

Sunset, Friday, 7 May 2010

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

Half angels’ breath and half motorcycle fumes. More or less.

Sunset, Thursday, 6 May 2010

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