Sunset, Tuesday, 25 August 2009

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

Tonight was a very typical summer sunset but one it seems I haven’t seen in months. Then, just a few minutes after this was done, the colors developed dramatically, so I may be posting a second, twilight version here sometime tomorrow.

Sunset, Monday, 24 August 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

’Scuse me while I kiss the sky.

Jimi Hendrix
“Purple Haze”

I had to laugh when I heard this again yesterday. Hadn’t ever thought of it in connection with the paintings.

People sometimes ask if there’s a meditative or prayer component to painting each day’s sunset. I could answer with a further lyric.

If you want to kiss the sky
Better learn how to kneel.

U2
“Mysterious Ways”

Sunset, Sunday, 23 August 2009

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

Nurse’s Song

William Blake

When the voices of children are heard on the green

And laughing is heard on the hill,

My heart is at rest within my breast

And every thing else is still

Then come home my children, the sun is gone down

And the dews of night arise

Come come leave off play, and let us away

Till the morning appears in the skies

No no let us play, for it is yet day

And we cannot go to sleep

Besides in the sky, the little birds fly

And the hills are all covered with sheep

Well well go & play till the light fades away

And then go home to bed

The little ones leaped & shouted & laugh’d

And all the hills ecchoed

Sunset (Twilight), Saturday, 22 August 2009

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

Except for the obligatory excerpt in a high school text, which apparently I didn’t find very interesting at the time, I came to Thoreau late – or perhaps I should be a little more optimistic and say lately – within the last four years. So if I say that painting each day’s sun sometimes seems a little like going out to Walden in instalments, it’s something that wouldn’t have occurred to me at the beginning – or else I might have done it sooner! For me this deep oval of sky, that I visit every day, is very much a sort of pond.

Today at two we had overcast and embedded thunderstorms. The point of view is almost the same as in last night’s sunset painting, just a little farther left, or north.

Pencil, watercolor pencil, chalk pastel and wash, 5 x 7.

Sunset, Thursday, 20 August 2009

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

This is only about the third hour of my life as an ophthalmology guinea pig, taking advantage of my natural tendency toward ‘monovision’ by wearing a lens in one eye and nothing in the other ... and this is the first painting I’ve ever done this way.

So if it looks to you that I’m doing weirdly elongated stuff like El Greco or painting like the nearly blind Monet, just let me know ... and I’ll be sure to stay with the prescription.

Sunset, Tuesday, 18 August 2009

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