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.

Top of the Coat Rack

Pencil, 5 x 7.

Feng Shui

Bench overturned by the wind
I’ve left it on its back for days
Invisible visitors, nowhere to rest
Bring the matter to my attention.

Sunset, Tuesday, 2 March 2010

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

March has very nearly played lamb and lion on consecutive days. Today it was a wet snow through most of the afternoon. Not that cold but after about four miles with Flint the foxhound, my toes were numb for an hour. Even Piney Mountain, less than two miles away, elevation 1116 feet (and usually out of the picture frame to the right, or north, in the sunsets), was shrouded in cold snow fog.

When I look at some paintings I see colors oscillating, side to side, as if coming forward – as if light does not fade but there is a dimension in which it keeps gathering strength, and colors, even grays, reach unknown intensities.

The First Verse

I found a meteorological blackberry
And gave it to a Christian dermatologist
She pronounced it ripe
It clouded her mind
She took off her hat
I opened some wine
Everything’s a fiction to some degree
We sang another anthem for the land of the free.