Sunset, Monday, 21 December 2009

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

I watched this solstice sky develop as I was walking back to the house, having been lying prone under my car in a snowdrift, trying to clear ice out of part of the clutch. 

Laura and I started dating on the winter solstice, December 21st, 14 years ago. We became engaged exactly one year later, on the next winter solstice, and were married the following June 21st, which was the summer solstice. A midsummer night’s wedding and a midwinter night’s dream.

Sunset, Sunday, 20 December 2009

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

With the solstice just one day away, I wanted to show some of the sun.

Sunset, Thursday, 17 December 2009

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

Wrestling today with a makeshift photo lighting setup – lights had to be sent back to the vendor for replacement – I contemplated the prospect of not being able to post the paintings at all (if they didn’t look halfway accurate).

The funny thing about that was how it made it more difficult to follow the usual discipline of painting – yet I painted sunsets for years while I wasn’t able to show them to anyone. Now I’m spoiled almost to the point of not being able to do them without you.

The sky this afternoon, until the sun fell, seemed all one color, a bluescape. I decided it was monoromantic.

Sunset, Wednesday, 16 December 2009

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

I had a choice from among innumerable stages of a clear winter twilight. I did one that reminded me of the sky over the slate roofs of the dorms at Hopkins, after I’d come outside from washing dishes.

I ran across this line in the second book of In Search of Lost Time (James Grieve translation). I’ve gone back to look at it a dozen times.

Our furthest-reaching resolutions are always made in a short-lived state of mind.

Proust isn’t saying these resolutions are made lightly or at all superficially – that’s one of the things I found so interesting. What mainly has kept me thinking about the line is how uncannily true it seems. A text for any biography.

I was amazed not to find the quote in Bartlett’s, whether in bound book or online, or anywhere in Bartleby.com, although it would be easy enough to miss, in that mess.

Sunset, Tuesday, 15 December 2009

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

Thanks to J. Tillman, who I heard for the first time today, I also heard, for the first time, “My Proud Mountains” by Townes Van Zandt, from a tribute album by mostly newer artists called Introducing Townes Van Zandt Via The Great Unknown. The following may seem a little morbid, especially considering the course TVZ’s life took, but ... anyway ... by way of burial instructions, the song says, lay him down easy –

with only my mountains between me and the sun

Sunset, Monday, 14 December 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Painted at Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on canvas, 16 x 20.

Near-far, white-blue, veils of haze and all the way past the veils, terrestrial contrails and untracked space, the gray in the gold, the pink in the gray, a gauzy mess barely noticed on the way back from Christmas shopping turns out to be, when you get home, a big garden of little evening glories.