Cloud in Front (Sunset, Wednesday, 25 August 2010)

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

When the painting started, it was going to be about dark “shadow rays” fanning up from the horizon – shadows of clouds – paradoxically giving the impression of light rays between them. But they got increasingly brushed back as the painting developed, and it somehow became for me more or less about the cloud in front.