[Whenever I Gaze On] Westminster Sunset – Sunset, Friday, 16 March 2012

William Van Doren, [WHENEVER I GAZE ON] WESTMINSTER SUNSET. Sunset from Westminster, Carroll County, Md. Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

Don’t know when I’ll paint the sunset from Waterloo Station, London, so I went ahead and referenced the ultra-beautiful Kinks song by Ray Davies. Fitting, since just after this I met my brother at a restaurant named Paradiso. (And ... it was a “Friday night”!) If you get a chance, check out the version of “Waterloo Sunset” by Ray Davies and the Crouch End Festival Chorus.

Sunset Chasers – Sunset, Saturday, 7 January 2012

William Van Doren, SUNSET CHASERS. Sunset from Westminster, Carroll County, Md. Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

I followed the sunset as I drove through the town of Westminster, Maryland, and its environs, stopping at several spots along the way.

Polar Opposite (Sunset, Saturday, 8 January 2011)

William Van Doren, POLAR OPPOSITE (Sunset from Taneytown Pike & New Windsor Road, Westminster, Md.) Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

The sky in Westminster, Maryland, seen from the same spot where I’d recorded the sunset on a 100° evening in July.

100° X 100°. Sunset, Saturday, 24 July 2010

William Van Doren. Sunset from Taneytown Pike & New Windsor Road, Westminster, Md. Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

An approximately 100-degree view of the sunset on an extremely hot day.

The Air Condition

On a trip to Westminster, Md., for a family event, so the sunsets – tonight’s very interesting one from here and tomorrow’s probably from somewhere between Mt. Airy, Md., and Culpeper, Va. – won’t be posted until Monday. Art stuff, bulky and messy as it is, is still not too challenging to carry around; it’s the photo setup that’s the deal-breaker.

Anyway – meanwhile – as temperatures both here and at home have been stuck around 100 to 103 for several hours now, I’ve been thinking about air conditioning.

The New York Times today has a short item about living without air conditioning, and some of the effects of AC culture, that I found interesting, especially since I spend most of my time in a non–air conditioned rented farmhouse. But I’m now in a fully chilled room in a nice motel. I arrived via a four-hour drive that was easily the hottest I’ve ever experienced, and that includes the mid-July Mojave and Anza-Borrego deserts. (The car has “problem AC,” so we didn’t use it.) Brutal. The room, though basic, was a luxurious relief. I cooled off. I took a nap. Then ... I took a short walk to a store. Brutal again. The cold and the hot, back and forth, are each equally disorienting.

Shuttling between the two states seems to create something like a zone of non-being, in which it can be difficult to know or feel just where you are, how you are, perhaps even who you are. So what I’m thinking about today is not so much air conditioning itself. It’s the strange discontinuity between air conditioned and non–air conditioned life. Perhaps the discontinuity is striking only when it’s this hot. But then, as I was walking across parking lots to the store, I realized: It could be hotter.

Well, yeah. It could be even hotter.

Sunset, Sunday, 7 March 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Brightwood, Culpeper County, Va. Oil on linen, 16 x 20.

This was the third version of Sunday’s sunset that I sketched and more or less completely ‘got’ while we were on the road home from Westminster, Maryland, via Frederick and Leesburg. Ultimately I felt I had to get the “pink ray” that shot up on the left.