The First Day of His New Life (Sunrise, Thursday, 2 September 2010)

William Van Doren, The First Day of His New Life (Sunrise from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va.) Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

I haven’t been doing (or closely observing) many sunrises, so it was fortunate that when a friend contacted me and said he was interested in the sunrise for September 2nd, I was able to ‘go back’ and paint it.

On that day, my friend, whom I’ve known since high school, had experienced something that for him was pretty close to a miracle. He had been enduring, for a very long time, worsening bouts of facial pain that failed to respond to the most common remedies, all of which he tried. “I was finally diagnosed with trigeminal neuralgia (TN), a dandy progressive incurable disease with a few centuries of witchcraft treatments to deal with the pain. I started with the ‘gold standard’ for TN – an anti-seizure medicine that is also a standard treatment for bipolar disorder.”

One of the few unexamined options seemed rather exotic and perhaps too risky to explore. “Eventually,” he writes, “the primary rhythm of life was balancing pain and pain management, timing daily activities around when I took my last pill or how long til I could take the next one. I had heard about a surgical approach that worked in cases where the pain was caused by a misalignment of arteries and nerves in the trigeminal nerve, but there was no way to tell if that was the cause of your TN until they went into the brain and poked around. Seemed like a stretch – as long as the drugs were working.”

My friend is not exactly the type to just sit around and wait. “The Trigeminal Neuralgia Association has a national conference every two years, and this year it was at the Mayo Clinic. I signed up for the weekend conference several months ago. About two months ago I hit the wall with the drugs. More Drug A, more Pill B, more pain. I couldn't talk without pain; eating was excruciating. I started losing weight ... below 125 I stopped looking at the scale. The conference website gave a number to call if you wanted to stop by the Mayo Clinic while at the conference. I made that call.

“The conference was Saturday and Sunday; on Monday morning I saw a neurologist and had an MRI using a new imaging technique. Wednesday the neurosurgeon reviewed the pictures with me and showed me where I had an artery wrapping around one branch of the trigeminal nerve. He said there was a good chance surgery would fix the problem, if I would like to go that route. He said he’d be glad to do the surgery when I felt the time was right.

“I asked him what he was doing the next morning.

“Turned out that was his surgery day and he made me his first case of the day. So when the sun was rising, I was on my way to the operating suite.

“When I woke up ... the pain was gone!”

Even though my friend cautions that there is a (small) possibility of recurrence, he calls September 2nd his ‘rebirthday’. He especially wanted to express his gratitude to the Mayo Clinic.

“I came in broken in body and spirit,” he says, “and four days later was reborn.”

Smoked Duck on the Red Ball Express

William Theodore Van Doren. Smoked Duck on the Red Ball Express. 2000. Oil on wood panel, 11 x 14.

I just got this painting back from a long-term loan and was very happy to have a chance to photograph it. I’ve alternated between simply calling it “Untitled” and naming it as shown here, but the title phrase came to me as soon as I finished the painting and never seems to want to go away. Part of a series keyed to red, crimson, orange and pink that I suspect isn’t over yet.

Sunset, Wednesday, 12 May 2010

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

Sunset, Sunday, 14 February 2010

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

In order to make a Valentine’s Day sunset I had decided, and was fully prepared, to make up a sky if necessary. I was thinking of a cadmium red and alizarin crimson sun on a field of rose. I was ready to jump the shark. But then the sky started taking the matter out of my hands. Forty minutes before sunset I was surprised to see a heart-shaped opening in the clouds. Seriously. It wasn’t there at sunset – instead, at sunset there was a very large heart-shaped cloud formation to the west and south, right over a glowing rosy red orange horizon. I’m not lying – a heart in the sky. So, even if you didn’t get one, you got one. As you should.

Update on Monday, February 22, 2010 at 11:24AM by BVD

Available as a fine art print, framed or plain, from Imagekind.

Sunset, Saturday, 30 January 2010

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

Snowing at sunset, some seven to eight inches having fallen since about dawn.

The peaceful perfection of snow must have something to do with how it covers the world in every color. We’ll see them all tomorrow in the sun, in millions of fractured sparks.

Update on Monday, February 1, 2010 at 07:09PM by BVD

This painting can be ordered as a fine art print, “Snowstorm at Sunset.”

Sunset, Monday, 25 January 2010

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

Out today after last night’s deluge and the resulting floods, it was easy to see in the untracked mud that no one else had been in the “back thousand acres” of this place where we rent – in fact no one’s been back there since deer hunting ended three weeks ago.

(The Rivanna at flood, by the way, was amazing to see, close-up in the woods.)

The first thing I thought (smug) was, wow, I guess these guys never come back here if they can’t shoot at deer. But then I realized, wait a minute, what if we hadn’t gotten Flint (the foxhound), who needs to run? How often would we come back here – how often did we come here, before we found him (late 2001) at the Fluvanna County SPCA, convinced by the shelter’s benign speculation that he was a mellow half-Lab?

Answer: Almost never.

It’s not just hunters. A lot of us need another reason, or we just don’t seem to get out much anymore.