Sunset, Saturday, 23 January 2010

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

Firmament on parchment.

Sunset, Tuesday, 19 January 2010

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

Out in the fields/woods, while Flint chased what he contended was a fox, it was a transitional day – or a day that gave the illusion of transition. With a mild west breeze, it was more like margins of January and margins of March and April overlapped, throwing the day out of time. Patches of granular icy snow bordered lanes of thawed mud the more slippery for overlaying frozen earth. Ahead on the jeep trail, the sun bounced off a wet mat of dead leaves and snow melt. In the cutover field of scrubby trees, the immature trees let in the strong sunlight, but today you could believe it was the force of the sun that blasted the field and stunted the trees.

The sun was merely making a feint toward another season. For someone like me, with my vague grasp of the calculus behind the duration of winter, it seems on a day like this that the sun can do anything, that it can hold back and keep winter here, or pour down and make winter spring.

Sunset, Monday, 18 January 2010

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

Sunset, Saturday, 16 January 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Old Rag from Obannons Mill Road, Rappahannock County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

This is my second sunset that included a view of Old Rag; the other, back on June 21st, was from farther east and south, at Locust Dale. This perspective is near a house we’ve been hoping to be able to buy ... still working on it. Painting Old Rag every day – that’d be a drag, right?

Sunset, Thursday, 14 January 2010

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

A recent excursion to the very fun letterheady.com (collecting all kinds of notable stationery – my personal favorite so far is Hal Roach Studios) included the 1960s letterhead used by the Rolling Stones. I was telling friends how much I liked the 1969 letter from Mick Jagger to Andy Warhol I saw when I visited the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. That letter can be found at lettersofnote.com.

I’m afraid I’m going to get nostalgic here. The letterheads, along with the offhand intelligent charm of the typewritten Jagger note, reminded me of the “good old days” of New York publishing, when I’d encounter correspondence like this all the time.

Yes, cut this post open – you can count the rings, quite a few of them.

Update on Friday, January 15, 2010 at 06:32PM by BVD

One note about letterheady.com – I could do without the Adolf Hitler stationery. I don’t think there’s any reason to display it, except perhaps in a true museum context.

Sunset, Wednesday, 13 January 2010

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

One of those sunsets that seems to drain the sky of color. Some days leave without quite saying good-bye.