Sunset, Friday, 19 June 2009

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

Sunset, Thursday, 18 June 2009

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

Concerning this painting, its soundtrack was a deer snorting about 20 times as it walked a half-circle in the field from the right into the center of this view. We tried to entertain Flint the foxhound by alerting him to the sound (he was inside ... reclining), but the same dog I’d seen yesterday chase a deer for a mile, weaving in and out of a wide swath of power line toward the Rivanna River, merely almost imperceptibly raised one brow as he tried to appraise whether what we were saying had anything to do with food.

Polyvision

Today we have Napoleon Bonaparte, Joan of Arc, and of course my friend Sarah Bruce. Then there’s the film director Abel Gance – and even the sunset. I just hope I can do this without injuring myself.

After I heard that today was the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, I found out that it’s also the date of an important victory, the Battle of Patay, by the army of Joan of Arc. (They say that the force under Joan’s immediate command wasn’t a major factor in the victory, but what I say is, if someone got burned at the stake at age 19, let’s be liberal with the plaudits.) 

This sent me through a zig-zag series of ideas not worth mentioning here, but I wound up at Abel Gance’s 1927 silent epic Napoléon, a film I saw circa 1980 after it had been restored by Kevin Brownlow and sent by Francis Ford Coppola on a tour of concert halls, with a full live orchestra accompanying the show. There’s a scene where Napoleon spins the globe and in the earth he sees a vision of Josephine.

What, I wondered, if Napoleon had been able to team up with someone like Joan of Arc? (I know this is a little silly, but bear with me.) His tactical prowess could have benefited from her visions (plural).

Yes, that’s a lot like those hyped-up conversations where kids might imagine Albert Pujols batting against Satchel Paige, or a battle of the bands featuring a long-gone group and a new one, etc., etc. But then it brought me back to Gance again, and his ‘Polyvision’ technique, revolutionary at the time, basically a split screen – sometimes divided into three sections.

At times, as I recall (having seen it again perhaps six or so years ago, on tape), the polyvision effect involves a central image and then one other complementary image, doubled at the sides, i.e., flipped on one of the sides. Thus in what I think was the ultimate scene, Napoleon’s army is marching in a long shot at the center of the screen, with the imperial eagle flying above, and at each side is the same close shot of a marching column of troops, marching out from the center toward the left, and then from the center toward the right. It sounds rudimentary, but with the timing of the scene as a culmination, the tricolor tinting of the three panels – blue, white, red – the sheer mass of the army, and the eloquent flying of Napoleon’s symbolic eagle, it’s powerful.

A more sophisticated use of multiple images – I think the effect is at times double exposure – occurs earlier when a storm of debate is raging in the Convention and Napoleon, at the same time, is making his way back from exile at Elba, sailing over a stormy sea. I had understood at one time that Gance swung the camera on a rope to convey the turbulence of the Convention, and the scene plays the two storms against each other, and doubles them, overlaid. 

Having come back to this scene, in a sense, by way of Joan of Arc, made me wish I could see all kinds of other simultaneous contrasts and overlays – further possibilities of this sort of layering. 

Which brings us back to ‘crossing’ energy, from the post of June 15th.

[A] casual conversation ... about our orientation to the poles eventually made me realize there might be a connection between the ‘energy’ of the sunset ... and my longtime fascination with things that run basically at a right angle to whatever I’m doing. This may sound a little weird, but – for example – I can’t drive up Route 15 between Gainesville, Virginia, and Point of Rocks, Maryland, without feeling at least a little, and sometimes profoundly, distracted by the beautiful creeks and streams that run underneath the road. Partly I just want to go down those streams; the feeling of going forward in fact and going at a right angle in mind produces a sort of friction – almost literally a spark – a ‘crossing’ energy. I know I’ll return to this idea at some point later (and I hope I won’t forget to bring in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce). And what I realized was that this orientation to the sunrise and sunset is somehow also a crossing energy – across the axis of the poles – perhaps playing something for us like a bow drawn over a string.

To this I got a response from Sarah, titled ‘interesting misreading’:

When I read “bow drawn over a string,” I pictured a bow and arrow (despite your clear meaning of a stringed instrument). I liked it enough to read it again and saw my error; liked it both ways.

I like it too. First, to get a so-called misreading is itself ‘crossing energy’ – one idea diverging from another. And for me it produced its own spark.

I realize I could have been clearer in the first place by saying “playing something for us like the sound of a bow drawn over a string.” But an arrow drawn across a bow, and bowstring – that’s a great image, because the energy – the speeding arrow – created by that particular perpendicular setup is so familiar and powerful.

So the sunset’s somehow a vector crossing over our deeply felt magnetic north orientation. On any one day, depending on the day and the person, it can seem like Time shot a flaming arrow – excuse the expression – across our bow.

Sunset, Wednesday, 17 June 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.This by all rights (or maybe I should say by almost all rights, since I clearly didn’t comply) should be a silver-gray painting belonging to a day of rain from morning til night. The sunset sky was silver, gray and white in billows and shreds rising from lower left to upper right.

Out today with Flint, in the afternoon, the silver light filtered through the trees made the woods seem like a luminous room, everything so easy to see, the greens especially, running cedar on the dark floor, new beech leaves beneath the ceiling. Rain seemed to carry light down with it. The calm, even glow made me think of the atrium in the old wing of the National Gallery of Art, with its skylights and water pool.

When we came out of the woods into the big field Laura and I call the Gobi Desert – a lush green oval one-third by two-thirds of a mile, so named for the experience of crossing it on a thick hot summer day when you’ve already walked five miles – it was simply a much, much bigger, softly lighted silver room. 

Walking today was more like wading, thanks in part to the rain but also because of the tall uncut grass.

Then, when it was time to paint, I knew that the color I was seeing could best be described as Davys gray and white, but I was impelled to try something different. Without knowing why, I worked brown-pink, radiant violet and sepia into my initial white layer, then painted Davys and titanium white over that. It’s not literally the color but perhaps sometimes to get a certain color or a certain light, it’s best not to match color for color and light for light.

I was happier, at any rate, than if I had simply painted gray. And it just started raining harder.

Sunset, Tuesday, 16 June 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.I shifted and cheated the perspective a little to the north to get the gnarly-looking clouds over Piney Mountain – a bit of the mountain at the extreme right. The clouds aren’t stormy as far as I know – a quiet, subdued, strangely cool evening.

Update on Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 09:50PM by BVD

Hmmm, correction: According to the weather authorities, the clouds may indeed be rainy. But probably not stormy, a probability devoutly to be grateful for, says Flint the thunder-shy foxhound.

Sunset, Monday, 15 June 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.Just before everything got swallowed up.

There might be a further post here tomorrow – haven’t decided whether to write about the strange topic, the relatively bland topic, or no topic. Come to think of it, ‘no topic’ could be quite interesting ... 

Update on Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 03:10PM by BVD

Technical. For just a moment inside a glowing gold auburn-ringed haze the sun was a perfectly defined pale disk, dimmer and brighter than the haze, and just how to do this alla prima is one of the sky things I haven’t figured out. Pale suns in haze – looks like several days of glazes to me.

(Do I think it’s necessary to be able to ‘represent reality’? No. But it’s a nice option to have.)

Metaphorical. That’s the last time we’d see the Great Lamp of the harbor of Atlantis. Volcanic smoke consumed it and the light disappeared.

Political. The bright circle reminded me of the handsome little Albemarle County Election Officer pin I’d received in the mail, and it occurred to me I’d better wear it while I still had the chance. (See June 9th.)

Physical. (Also, Tragicomic.) (Aerobic.) The woods have grown so tall, and with all these other trees that have come up near the yard, I sometimes can’t see enough of the sunset from any one place in the yard, the fields, or the house. So tonight it’s back and forth in the back yard – back inside the house to the second floor landing and then the studio – back outside – over to the fence – out to the front fields – back to the second floor. Did I miss anything?

Confessional. (Also, Culinary.) (Plus, see Tragicomic, Aerobic.) I have really avoided mentioning this in the two months I’ve been doing this blog, primarily because it doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m trying to say, but also because I know people will think I’m painfully crazy – but I’m usually cooking while I’m painting, photographing and posting. It ain’t Laura’s fault – she wants to cook more – I’m what they call an alpha cook. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, it’s insane ... To paraphrase Robert Johnson, you’d better come on in my kitchen, especially if you’re hungry. Fortunately, tonight’s easy – leftover spaghetti carbonara.

Metaphysical. (Trippy, New Age.) The casual conversation with Gillian and Paul on Saturday about our orientation to the poles eventually made me realize there might be a connection between the ‘energy’ of the sunset (I told you this was trippy) and my longtime fascination with things that run basically at a right angle to whatever I’m doing. This may sound a little weird, but – for example – I can’t drive up Route 15 between Gainesville, Virginia, and Point of Rocks, Maryland, without feeling at least a little, and sometimes profoundly, distracted by the beautiful creeks and streams that run underneath the road. Partly I just want to go down those streams; the feeling of going forward in fact and going at a right angle in mind produces a sort of friction – almost literally a spark – a ‘crossing’ energy. I know I’ll return to this idea at some point later (and I hope I won’t forget to bring in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce). And what I realized was that this orientation to the sunrise and sunset is somehow also a crossing energy – across the axis of the poles – perhaps playing something for us like a bow drawn over a string.