Sunset, Tuesday, 22 September 2009

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

Day 3 of the ‘Mostly Cloudy’ Sunset Hostage Standoff ... with rain.

Today’s the 12th anniversary of the first of the consecutive daily sunset paintings – 22 September 1997. Of course, today’s also the autumnal equinox, just as the 22nd was in 1997, the reason I had decided to start on that day.

I’d been painting sunsets and sunrises since 1995 and don’t remember any great deliberations, or any particular design or plan, behind the decision to try painting every day. I don’t think I understood, on any sort of conscious level, why I was doing it, which probably helps explain why, after I’d painted every sunset through the end of 1997 and then all of 1998, after New Year’s Day 1999, I stopped.

Even after starting again, on New Year’s Day 2006, I still don’t think I had any clear or explicit idea what the significance of this daily observance might be. I was painting largely on intuition.

You might say the paintings are a direct response to the days themselves. I painted the sunset because the sun was setting.