Sunset, Sunday, 21 March 2010

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

As part of the unearthing (or, to abuse a Wikipedia term, disambiguation) of past writings from sunsets where they had been ... earthed ... or ambiguated ... I’ve made last October’s post on Edgar Allan Poe’s “Island of the Fay” and a set of digressions based on Poe’s “Tale of the Ragged Mountains” into separate entries.

Cinderella Story

Art materials, an inventory. Cracked white ceramic coffee cup with missing handle; no-name drafty steel and cast iron wood stove; cats; white spotted hound with floppy caramel-colored ears; wood bookshelves that miraculously still hold books and not the overflowing sunset canvases; windows; sunlight; shadows in the yard; oaks; notebooks; clouds; ballpoint; mountains. Now for the Disney birds to stitch it all together.

Sunset, Saturday, 20 March 2010

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

Equinox (20 March 2010)

It’s kind of funny to just sit and watch a sunset, which, perhaps surprisingly, I don’t often get a chance to do. This one, ten minutes ahead of sunset time, is mostly smoky purple and grayish white with a great yellow blaze, all of which will change. Might not be til twilight that I’ll really see what’s happening. This has been a first day of Spring that really lived up to the title. Maybe it’s my imagination, but with the vernal equinox the sun seemed poised in a sort of balance with the earth – sun and bright slate of the porch, sun and hot cat fur, sun and green paint of the wood chair absorbing the sun, sun and polished toasted oak leaves over the ground, sun from above, daffodils from below, blue sky and blue mountain. Sun and the night. Advantage sun.

Sunset, Friday, 19 March 2010

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

So I’m waiting for the drive-in teller at the credit union to send back my receipt, when I look up and realize, Damn, we sure do have some nice streetlamps here at our credit union ...

Ballpoint on CVS Chunky Pad, 4 x 6.I decided streetlamps that could almost be Parisian were probably a worthwhile expense. 

This by the way fulfills a prediction I made months ago that I would eventually post something drawn, not on the wonderful Moleskine notebook with some exquisite drawing instrument, but on my equally trusty CVS Chunky Pad, with the ever-ready Bic Velocity ballpoint.

Sunset, Thursday, 18 March 2010

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

As part of a process of resorting and redefining the site, I’ve begun to separate some of the longer entries or mini-essays from the sunsets they once accompanied, partly with the idea of making them easier to find in the Index to Past Entries. If even I can’t remember what sunset dates certain essays or prose pieces came with, I doubt you will. For example, “Trees and Sunsets” and “Thoreau: What Did the Sunset Say?” from last May, are now stand-alone pieces. I’ll be continuing with this process over the next several days. In addition, I’ve eliminated the Notes in the Margin section and brought all of those entries into this main journal sequence; they can be found in the Index as well.

Also today I’ve made two more paintings available as prints: “The Red Sofa” and “Bastille Day Twilight.”