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.

Sunset, Saturday, 5 December 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Snowing since mid-morning, although with the air in the mid-30s, mostly just a heavy trace on the ground.

I was surprised by something in Proust, first just by the fact that he said it, and then by the strange way it struck me as relating to two seemingly very different things: internet and sunset (web and sun).

For, after all, my mind had to be a single thing; or perhaps there is only a single mind, in which everybody has a share, a mind to which all of us look, isolated though each of us is within a private body, just as at the theater, where, though every spectator sits in a separate place, there is only one stage.

Sunset, Friday, 4 December 2009

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

So, what’s the written equivalent of doodles?

Cat’s eye, golden, through an opening in his carrying cage, yellow.

Cat thought balloon: I’m almost 18 and doing O.K. What could they say that would make any difference?

Man thought balloon: I don’t know ... veterinary marketing ...

Elton John Christmas song (the one they always play) on the waiting room radio.

Sorry to do that to you. (Meaning you, the reader.)

I’m supposed to be writing today about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Now there’s something: Elton John and KSM, together again for the first time.

Client flies 757s and 767s and although, thank God, he’s not into ‘911 Truth’, he also doesn’t think al Qaeda remotely capable of what we assume they did.

Not a pleasant thought. Makes the prospect of a trial interesting indeed.

Vet waiting rooms make me edgy, much more than if it were just me in a doctor’s office.

Reading Jane Kramer in The New Yorker on preparing all kinds of Thanksgiving dinners all over the world. Very good so far, as you would expect from her, although – this may seem paradoxical – if she had to do a blog, perhaps she’d become a little less focused on the first-person singular aspect of things. (Revised from: “ ... if she had to do a blog, I think she’d become ... ”)

Blogging, one can become painfully aware of one’s self-orientation. Can’t always tell, of course, how one is doing with this on a given day.

Client’s book is here. Again, keep in mind, despite all the wacky stuff Amazon puts on the same product page (“Buy this book together with I Was the Shooter on the Grassy Knoll! by Oswald Rabbit”), the author is not in sympathy with the sad indeterminate notions of so-called ‘911 Truth’.

Got to clean brushes as soon as I get home.

Sunset tonight: supposed to get cloudy, then rain, then snow. After so many hundreds of sunsets, I have an idea what that might look like. It’s odd to think, first, I can never know what my subject will really be, and then what the painting will be, in response.

A thought: Just make it count.

The vet comes in: Dr. Richard Freedman. A prince, an archduke – no, better, a knight among vets. Makes me happy we made the trip. He loves animals. In his hands, veterinary marketing is redeemed.

On the way home, on the seat beside me, through an opening in his yellow carrying cage, a cat’s eye, golden.

Sunset, Thursday, 3 December 2009

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

Sunset seemed to be happening on schedule, but I had one more woodcutting chore. Lucky for me, because things really started happening during the twilight portion of the program.

Yesterday and today tempted me with different ways to say early December feels a little out of focus. Shepherding Flint yesterday on a five-mile-or-so off-leash ‘walk’ (his part is more like a run, and longer), in the rain, I had foolishly just believed the forecast and wasn’t dressed for 39°, and the low dark clouds (and my numb hands and feet) belonged to midwinter. 

This afternoon I had the impression of the sky as a big watery blue bog of early spring.

But then the days aren’t out of focus except in these conceits. Early December shows us exactly what it is, and these are the days – the days we’re dealt.

Sunset, Wednesday, 2 December 2009

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

I’m sure there are plenty of other bloggers who have to fix a chainsaw in the pouring rain while composing an entry and watching the sunset in order to post a daily painting. We could form a professional association. The name doesn’t really matter, as long as it makes the acronym M E N T A L.

I’ve been catching up with an old friend who was a significant person in my life, and she wrote something I found quite striking. We were both once strict “laissez-faire libertarians,” part of a group that, at the time, would have objected to being labeled ‘conservative’. However, conservative is what we were, when you get down to it; some in our old cohort have even since slithered on over into that grotto called neoconservatism.

In any event, her comment was somehow the most accessible explanation I’ve seen for why a person would mature into a liberal.

I have moved way across the spectrum since the early days of knowing you and today would shamelessly describe myself as a tax-and-spend liberal. One of my biggest frustrations is with the reluctance of the American people to devote themselves and their money to creating a more robust community and to assuring a more satisfying life experience for others sharing the planet at the very same moment in time.

Simple humanity and common sense.

Sunset, Tuesday, 1 December 2009

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

Today is my friend Sarah Bruce’s birthday. Not sure about her age, except it’s somewhere under 40. Anyway, usually – in fact, always – Sarah, who controls the weather on her birthday because she’s some form of witch, contrives to deprive me of any sort of skyscape on December 1st except for a clear cold blue sky and that’s it, no clouds, no other color, thanks very much.

I guess this year she relented. I want to thank her for the sky.

Sarah moved north from here to be closer to Salem, I guess. If this sort of thing interests you, you might check out her blog, I Nap, Therefore I Am a Witch.

Around a week ago I posted a little item about the cover of The New Yorker and its image of a pumpkin pie – and a ‘pumpkin cloud’ – by Wayne Thiebaud and I made a wild guess that the original painting might run you $75,000. Now, thanks to a link in the blog emdashes, I’ve seen some of the actual prices for which Thiebauds have sold recently. Did I say last week that $75,000 was probably way, way off, on the conservative side? Well, out of some 30 Thiebaud paintings at what seems to be a sort of meta–auction site, I did manage to find one that had gone dirt cheap for $62,000 – and all the rest, forget about it.

In fact, speaking of pumpkin, a Wayne Thiebaud of slices of the pie sold for $1,900,000.

If you’d like to get in on the pop art action, but didn’t start saving 30 years ago, you can buy a Mike Fitts now and thank me later.