Sunset, Saturday, 13 February 2010

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on Arches watercolor block, 16 x 20.

Funny, as soon as I started to write this I thought of the old hymn “Work, For The Night Is Coming,” which my grandmother used to sing at her piano and we would sing with her. But to work while seeing the sun set can bring a sense of contemplation to the process. I think of times, both during this series and otherwise, when I’d have to be out on a back road somewhere cutting firewood at sunset. If I was painting sunsets, of course I’d have to watch while I was working. But even if I wasn’t about to paint, the picture of time passing, of day falling into night, brought all kinds of feelings to what I was doing. Sometimes it might be something close to self-pity that I was out getting wood just before dark – as if I were the peasant in “Good King Wenceslas” when I’d rather be the king. (I seem to be related to all three characters in that song.) But mostly it was some variation on the contemplation of the stark deep beauty of the world, mixing in a strange way with the tasks of cutting and splitting wood. As if, as I watched the sky, with my every movement, there was a movement of the heart.

Sunset, Sunday, 31 January 2010

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

Snow-covered, clear and calm (I’m sure about that part), and headed for 10°F (maybe).

There was a sort of Good King Wenceslas moment that came to me years ago, in another place. I was gathering cedarwood by moonlight, walking in a luminous field of frost, the moon a great frost mirror, so bright it blew all stars away except a few frozen points. A plane overhead, two prop engines, flashed one running light cherry frost, the other vanilla. I realized I felt warmed by the frost, that cold could be deceptive, and frost a flame.