Light of the Mountain (Sunset, Wednesday, 15 December 2010)

William Van Doren, LIGHT OF THE MOUNTAIN (Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va.) Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

West of Eden (Sunset, Tuesday, 30 November 2010)

William Van Doren, WEST OF EDEN (Sunset from Rosena, Albemarle County, Va.) Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

Sunset arrived in the rain, in the middle of a three-hour saga involving Laura’s car, a flat tire and a stuck wheel. Thanks to my brother Steve, a shade-tree mechanical genius, for telling me how to free the wheel. (Place my butt down in the pool of water adjacent to the car, put both heels together, kick the sides and the top of the wheel, and it’ll pop right off. After four kicks, I’ll be damned, it popped.)

This all happened at Rosena, a tiny place at the foot of the western side of the Southwest Mountains. During a lull in the action I wandered over to a Virginia historic marker on the roadside and read that Thomas Jefferson considered the Southwest Mountains “the Eden of the United States.” I wouldn’t argue, even while wet and stranded on the slope. 

SE Over SW (Sunset, Sunday, 24 October 2010)

William Van Doren, SE OVER SW (S.E. Sky at Sunset, from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va.) Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

The western horizon was mostly a web of gray contrails, so I turned at sunset to the view nearly opposite, in the southeast and south – almost exactly the same perspective I would use, and have used, for a January sunrise. Just to confuse matters, the small mountains nearby are called by the name Southwest.

Ebb (Sunset, Wednesday, 20 October 2010)

William Van Doren, EBB (Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va.) Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

Looking past Piney Mountain and the woods to a Blue Ridge I couldn’t quite see.

Metaperspective

The ground is a sky in disguise. The sky is a ground in surround. Over and under, let no man put asunder, yet any may turn them around.

Field, Scuffletown Road, Orange County

William Theodore Van Doren. Field, Scuffletown Road, Orange County, Va. May 2000. Oil on wood panel, 9 x 12.