Sunset, Monday, 9 November 2009

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

I was so happy to have found the original version of “Sukiyaki” by Kyu Sakamoto, I had to play it on a loop while I was doing this painting.

Then again – lucky for me this business of painting a sunset in real time doesn’t take more than 10 or 12 plays.

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Carcass of a fox twisted, wrapped around itself by the side of the road. Then, right after that, a flattened cardboard box. The soggy corrugated skin of the fox is nothing like what it was before. Does the fox care? I’m sure it did, for a moment there – in which I would have gladly reversed all laws of motion, contained everything, and sealed it up, for this fox. And all. While I go rattling down the road in my container.