Sunrise, Inauguration Day (Preparatory Sketch)

Watercolor pencil and wash on Arches cover, 16 x 20.

Found this, from the period between researching the Lincoln Memorial in early January and actually going to the inauguration – working out how I might handle doing the sunrise on January 20th. This sketch is the opposite perspective from the sunset of January 5th, and is connected to the last two images in the Inauguration Day archive.

This is the point of view I was set on for the inauguration until John Addison Van Doren, my wise and wonderful cousin, suggested the Iwo Jima Memorial and the Lee-Custis Mansion.

The sunrise itself is hypothetical, which reminds me of some sunsets and sunrises given to me by my six-year-old niece, Sydney Sutherland, of Baltimore. (She was five at the time.) As her father, John Sutherland, explained in sending two of the drawings, her sunset was drawn from memory but her sunrise “was drawn completely from premonition.” I love that phrase.

So this is a sunrise from premonition. If, like me, you’re a sunrise painter but not a morning person, those can be very tempting.

Sunset, Tuesday, 30 June 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on canvas, 16 x 20.

There’s a light that shines, constantly, of which the sun is a part (for which the sun plays apart) and the moon is maid – a light that the light we see every day and night illuminates. To be a painter of light, I would think that’s the light to look for.

Sunset, Monday, 29 June 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Behind the cedar, the box elder, the paradise trees / trees of heaven, the peach and the sour cherry, the great red oaks and their wild grapevines and poison ivy, behind the fields of a dozen deer beyond the trees, behind the woods beyond the fields, woods of white pine and post oak, sassafras, dogwood, redbud and hickory, behind the rocky streams and ravines sunk down in the woods, behind the jeep trails and power lines and the highway and the small near mountain, behind the valleys before the blue ridged mountains, behind the ridge itself, the sun pulls all toward it, brings everything together into one tree, one field, one wood, one stream, one mountain, one great darkness, filled with light.

Sunset, Sunday, 28 June 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Cottonwood

Cottonwood, 2009. Oil on canvas, 10 x 18.

Painting was shot just a little dark to avoid reflections – background isn’t black but a varying mix of prussian blue, ultramarine, sepia, alizarin crimson, a little o’ this, little o’ that ...

Twilight, Saturday, 27 June 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on linen, 16 x 20.

This was only 15 or so minutes after the sunset.

Change happens.

I decided ‘twilight’ was a better description than ‘15 or so minutes after sunset’. Then, as I was painting, the iChing (iPod on shuffle) threw out Antony & The Johnsons, “Twilight.”

I have yet to hear anything by Antony that I haven’t liked. I would say he’s the marriage (?) of Boy George and Roy Orbison, except that fails to do justice, if not to his talent, to something that he expresses. I first encountered him through his soul-shaking performance of “If It Be Your Will” on Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man. Several of the performances on that soundtrack, while perfectly fine in the context of the film, grow precious on further listening – but not that one. Rufus Wainwright is another notable exception.

Shooting this linen canvas – the photo setup involved – gave me a chance to add a sunset that I really like, involving the Lincoln Memorial, from January 5th.

I’ve also added a new entry – “Looking at the Sunset (Part 5)” – a sketch that I originally thought was bad. In fact, I only ran across it again because I’d sketched this crazy twilight on the back of the same sheet! 

My reversal of opinion about my own sketch – I actually like it a great deal – illustrates something I told my students (Willa, Mohan, and Lakshmi) about a dozen times each, when they’d be discouraged or dismayed by something they’d tried to do – and it’s something that I told them (every time) I have trouble learning myself. Especially in visual art, the quality of what you do can’t be judged by your own immediate emotional reaction. Save your work – save your sketches! If nothing else, days, weeks or years later when you encounter them again, they’ll bring back some part of your life to you.

You may also be surprised how much more promising they seem than they did on the day you were caught up in judging yourself.