Sunset, Tuesday, 29 December 2009

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

There’s a winter landscape right between a freeze and a thaw, and you may interpret it differently depending on which direction it’s taking. Some ground shows, in places even almost dry, there’s a beaten-back green inside the dead-straw matted grass – while entire fields remain solidly white. The sky approaching sunset doesn’t tip off any colors or show any clouds. We might have a solemn sinking of the sun and a falling thermometer, and no reassuring music to go along with it. Then at the last minute, even though it is indeed turning cold, we hear a little tune for a winter sunset.

Sunset, Monday, 28 December 2009

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

I did a small painting for a friend today based on a Chinese ink painting from about 1750 – Willow and Peach Blossoms, by Li Shan. I thought about it later, while I was painting the sunset, because I’m sometimes uncertain whether this daily practice is really worthwhile. I realized how wonderful it might be if Li Shan had left a record of his observations of daily sunsets or sunrises in the 18th century.

Today is the eighth anniversary of the day we adopted Flint (the fabulous foxhound) from the Fluvanna County SPCA. Since I’ve mentioned him in a million posts and shown him only once, I thought I’d give him a little more air time. Here’s a formal profile of Flint watching something out the living room window:

Laura Owen Sutherland

Very recent:

Laura Owen Sutherland

And very typical:

L.O.S.

Sunset, Sunday, 27 December 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset at Woodbridge/Dale City, Prince William County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

This might be called Fantasy and Variations on a Suburban Sunset. It was indeed a thin cold clear sky with a reddish gold splash where the sun sank down, but I’ve omitted the houses and wide suburban courts (or cul-de-sacs) – the Potomac Mills shopping center is within walking distance – and reinstated the swampy woods. It wasn’t difficult, since I grew up just a few miles from here, when the entire area was mostly swampy woods.

Sunset, Saturday, 26 December 2009

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

We managed to get out today after seven days of being snowed in. While we were traveling around the roads and parking lots lined with dirty snow and slush, the sky made me think about the beach in L.A. A strange thing about a city that borders the ocean is that no matter who you are or where you live or how you stand in that city, when you get to the edge, that ocean is yours as much as anyone’s.

Sunset, Christmas Day, 25 December 2009

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

Steady rain, rising temperatures, and fog rising from the snow at sunset.

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol:

Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick-beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was rich. In almshouse, hospital, and gaol, in misery’s every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing and taught Scrooge his precepts.

Sunset, Thursday, 24 December 2009

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

On the way, finally, to cut a tree – way way too big for any normal living room, as I’m sure you would have observed in an instant –

(we are now improvising alternative arrangements for decorating our living room) – anyway, on this arduous one-mile fool’s errand (my fool’s errands are always arduous, it seems to be my style) – I took a break.

(The tree was found in a field doomed to be cleared and developed, a situation for another time, perhaps.)

I fell straight back in the snow, to look up at what seemed an endless polar blue. (A blue that paled considerably by sunset.) The considerable strains of our snowstorm-blocked preparations eased. What I saw was a fantastic blue that kept changing depths, behind the clean, slightly shaggy yet almost polished-looking pale brown top branches of big white oaks. For that moment, sky and trees were a Christmas card I gave myself.