Sunset, Sunday, 25 October 2009

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

Skies to the west were clear; I turned almost 90° to the south for this view.

The following comes from 1993, two years before I started painting the sunset. Over the top – literally – but perhaps a sign that the series to come was not an accident.

Twilight, and the world becoming more real with each moment, approaching the peak of reality halfway between dark and light. Night is superimposed on the day; day is visible in the night; trees, their leaves, are still distinct, yet deny their own primacy as they take on darkness. The sky is filled with light leaving; dark coming. The axis we turn on is like a Ferris wheel stopping for elongated seconds to give each passenger at least one shot at the view from the top. At the invisible borderline of rose and indigo, possibilities are endless either way; inconceivable both ways. I follow the sun, attend the moon, doubling easily, without effort, in the mild evening air. I stretch from here, to there, facing in, out. I become a revolving sphere looking within and without, with and without itself. Boundaries soft and sweet as the air; I suddenly expand, taking in the high clouds my face and eyes, the sweep of the woods my shoulders, the curve of the fields my arms, the ponds my vital organs, the geese flying up the ponds my voice, I’m soaring above the house, the trees in the yard my legs, and now even these attributes dissolve and I expand again, insubstantial, higher, higher, farther, at peace, even as I sit in the deck chair with its aluminum frame and frayed plastic webbing. Twilight time.