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Monday
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Overland Route – Sunset, Friday, 11 September 2015
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William Van Doren, OVERLAND ROUTE. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on canvas, 28 x 35.
I decided to experiment by imagining a point of view about a thousand feet above my usual vantage point in the fields.
Posted on 
Monday, September 14, 2015 at 11:07AM | by BVD | in Sunset Paintings, Sunsetology | tagged Blue Ridge, William Van Doren, outsider art, painting, sunset | Share Article | Post a Comment
Monday, September 14, 2015 at 11:07AM | by BVD | in Sunset Paintings, Sunsetology | tagged Blue Ridge, William Van Doren, outsider art, painting, sunset | Share Article | Post a Comment 
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“What’s with all the straight lines/boxes in your recent paintings?”
That was a question posed today by someone who follows the Very Rich Hours page on Facebbok.
I replied as follows:
“I probably don’t know the entire reason for the lines/designs, because part of it is a mystery, just as the process of making art involves exploring a mystery. To the extent that I can explain it, I believe that what we experience when we see something like a sunset can’t be expressed by what we see, by simply reproducing the elements of what’s in our visual field. Especially at sunset, a larger world is present.
“Do I think that the larger world is described by lines like the ones in my paintings? Not really. But when I seem to have finished the usual pictorial aspects of a sunset, first of all, I know or I feel without a doubt that it isn’t done, it isn’t right. I’m following an intuition or an impulse wherever it goes, knowing full well that it may not work. The intention or hope behind the lines and diagrams is that it will create another plane that distracts you from the picture plane; in a sense it’s a deliberate messing up of the painting, but with the hope that when you try to hold both the normal image and the other elements in your vision at the same time, a third reality can emerge, as a sense or a feeling of something greater. That's why I titled this painting Larger Than Life.
“I realize that for some viewers, perhaps for many, it doesn’t work. For a few, it may have worked immediately. And I also have to say that tomorrow I could move on to a different way of achieving this same goal. Perhaps the best way to illustrate what this is all about is through the Solar Panel canvases I started doing in March. The paintings were of the sun, but they weren’t done, for me, until I had added enough lines, areas of deep and bright color, interlacing patterns, etc., to create a sense of a bigger experience.
“In a sense I’m using visual elements to reproduce, or stand in for, something that was never just visual in the first place. Even though it can look geometric, the intention is basically spiritual, although that word could be easily misunderstood. I do believe that there are spirit worlds that are always with us, and I am trying to go beyond the visual world, but, again, by using visual elements — tricks, almost. I hope you'll hang with me while I try to work it out. It may be that at some point it will seem more integrated, and in some cases I think it does work that way.”