Springtime and Smoke – Sunset, Monday, 18 April 2016

William Van Doren, SPRINGTIME AND SMOKE. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on canvas, 20 x 24.

SNP Smoke – Sunset, Sunday, 17 April 2016

William Van Doren, SNP Smoke. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on canvas, 18 x 20.

When a Lovely Flame Dies – Sunset, Saturday, 16 April 2016

William Van Doren, WHEN A LOVELY FLAME DIES. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on canvas, 20 x 24.

“Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” was my father’s favorite song, although I mainly found this out because he hated the version by The Platters that I was listening to on the radio in 1958. He didn’t appreciate hearing a doo wop version of the 1930s hit. In any case, my use of this phrase from the song was inspired by a pall of smoke that was beginning to gather in an otherwise clear sky Saturday night. I don’t know where the fires are, but tonight, Sunday, the smoke is even more distinct. So the painting began with a “smoke” color made of rose madder, burnt sienna, naples yellow, azo orange and a pigment concoction called brown-pink.

Brushfire (Sunset, Saturday, 19 February 2011)

William Van Doren, BRUSHFIRE (Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va.) Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

High winds all day in this part of Virginia, and many brushfires in the area. One fire created this plume across the sky at sunset.

Sunset, Monday, 23 November 2009

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

Today, in the rain, I caught myself looking appraisingly at certain long-dead trees hung up and leaning in the woods – trees that could be, at first glance, either a cedar or a pine. That’s because pine is almost always useless for burning in a wood stove, and cedar (in my opinion, not shared by everyone) is fantastic. It was kind of a silly exercise because this was a place where I can’t go wood-cutting, but I think it was a reflex left over from a winter fifteen years ago.

Back then I was renting a circa 1845 farmhouse off Scuffletown Road in Orange County, Virginia, more than a mile from my nearest neighbor, and heating almost exclusively with an old wood stove and wood I was cutting myself. Along one of the fencelines, for about a quarter-mile at the border between a big field and the woods, at least two dozen very large cedars had been blown down, or pushed over, years before, perhaps decades before. All had fallen back into the woods and were completely dry, bleached white-gray like huge wrecks of driftwood. The wood inside was deep red. Heartwood.

I ended up using every last one of the fallen trees, and they were just enough to get me through. For me this was a year of reflection and restoration, and the fragrant burning cedar seemed to ‘smudge’ not just my house but me. I marveled how it burned so cleanly, with almost no ash. This was the period immediately before I began the sunset paintings. Anything I do today I owe in part to the Cedars of Scuffletown.