Smoked Duck on the Red Ball Express

William Theodore Van Doren. Smoked Duck on the Red Ball Express. 2000. Oil on wood panel, 11 x 14.

I just got this painting back from a long-term loan and was very happy to have a chance to photograph it. I’ve alternated between simply calling it “Untitled” and naming it as shown here, but the title phrase came to me as soon as I finished the painting and never seems to want to go away. Part of a series keyed to red, crimson, orange and pink that I suspect isn’t over yet.

Sunset, Tuesday, 2 March 2010

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

March has very nearly played lamb and lion on consecutive days. Today it was a wet snow through most of the afternoon. Not that cold but after about four miles with Flint the foxhound, my toes were numb for an hour. Even Piney Mountain, less than two miles away, elevation 1116 feet (and usually out of the picture frame to the right, or north, in the sunsets), was shrouded in cold snow fog.

When I look at some paintings I see colors oscillating, side to side, as if coming forward – as if light does not fade but there is a dimension in which it keeps gathering strength, and colors, even grays, reach unknown intensities.

Storyline

I am raving, hear me rave, as I recount a story of all stories, their essence. A story, ostensibly time, place, character, action, is in reality color. All about color. Story color comes before story line – this is a principle of aesthetics and a fact about action.

Blue moves me and I move in blue. Sometimes, a different matter entirely, I may wake up with the Blues. Or I wake up sunny yellow and go on into the green of noon. And when you greet me, you may be violet, red, crystalline white.

My own body – should we need a description of the protagonist – is a bay of moving color, steam clouds of pigmented feeling boiling a shape. You can say I’ve lost all sense, but it’s no wonder when you consider what I’m made of.