Sunday Morning

When the light’s too bright to write, it’s too bright to write, you’re done, you’re not so much writing as written.

Saturday Afternoon

Woods wells of sunlight. Sunlight fountains of woods.

Shadow

Shadow was convinced
It created light
Shadow could not believe
Itself secondary
The day shadow learned how to make light
It became that much darker
Then shadow gave up
Happy just to feel
Light on its face. 

Sunset, Wednesday, 21 April 2010

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

If today were a novel, the sunset wouldn’t be the ending but the chapter in which the strange salmon and purple light changes everything.

Sunset, Saturday, 17 April 2010

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

Today light seemed like a quantity and I couldn’t remember when I’d seen so much.

Sunset, Tuesday, 2 March 2010

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

March has very nearly played lamb and lion on consecutive days. Today it was a wet snow through most of the afternoon. Not that cold but after about four miles with Flint the foxhound, my toes were numb for an hour. Even Piney Mountain, less than two miles away, elevation 1116 feet (and usually out of the picture frame to the right, or north, in the sunsets), was shrouded in cold snow fog.

When I look at some paintings I see colors oscillating, side to side, as if coming forward – as if light does not fade but there is a dimension in which it keeps gathering strength, and colors, even grays, reach unknown intensities.