Big Cloud Clearance – Sunset, Friday, 5 July 2013

William Van Doren, BIG CLOUD CLEARANCE. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

An album of notes for this painting at facebook/theveryrichhours.

Recently Buried Treasure – Sunset, Friday, 25 May 2012

William Van Doren, RECENTLY BURIED TREASURE. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

A narrative of tonight’s sunset here.

Artemis and Zeus – Sunset, Tuesday, 22 May 2012

William Van Doren, ARTEMIS AND ZEUS. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

I couldn’t think of a title, so this was basically named by fans at the Facebook page.

Heat Map. Sunset, Thursday, 22 July 2010

William Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

The kind of heat we’re having, in a non–air conditioned farmhouse, can make a painter want to attack the canvas without thinking, without waiting, without mixing, without preparing – without caring. It may not be quite the same as the Zen of no-mind, but it’s the Zen du jour for sure.

In other developments, Moment & Horizon has a new Page on Facebook.

Sunset, Sunday, 11 October 2009

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

A note on how e-mail and, perhaps even more than that, Facebook, have altered the playing field for writers. “West Hollywood,” a poem from 1982 that I posted the other day, originally had two exclamation points that were very important to the piece – but my spouse observed, and I realized she was right, that these would not register the same way now. I took them out.

Exclamation points are now anything but exceptional in everyday communication. I started adding them more and more to my own e-mails, simply from the awareness that without them most of my correspondents might think what I was saying sounded flat, cold or even angry. They’re almost useless!

We agreed Walt Whitman might have a tough time if he were writing today.

Sunset, Friday, 3 July 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

These posts have been a little intense lately, so I could go for a change of pace. Perhaps something more on the order of a Facebook style of discourse – so –

Is it just me or has this been a great year for grapefruit?

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Today by way of recognizing the birthday of my late father-in-law, Sidney Everette Sutherland (1937–2002), I’d like to put in a word for the guy who wrote one of his favorite songs, “Joy To The World” (for Three Dog Night). There’s something about Hoyt Axton I always liked and I just think he and Mr. Sutherland would have gotten along very well, if only on the strength of the sentiments in that song. Mr. Sutherland’s parenting style is nicely suggested by the lines “Joy to the world/ All the boys and girls ... ”

In addition, any doubt you could possibly still have about the limits of Wikipedia can be erased by the third line of its piece on this song: “The words are nonsensical.”

Hoyt’s mother, Mae Axton, co-wrote Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” ... and another of Hoyt’s songs, “Greenback Dollar” (Kingston Trio), is a folk song with virtually a rock beat, and easy to play, so in the 1960s it rescued countless high school hootenannies just on the strength of pure energy.

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Ragged clouds seemed cold and threatening but in places overhead actually as thin as smoke – I could see blue behind them, dirty orange light inside. Fake bad weather – gray containment of light, a cold diffusion of light with the effect of making everything on the ground seem solid, sculptural, clear, super-real. Today I would have had no trouble mapping the position on the ground of everything between here and the woods. Massive trunks of nearby red oaks could have served as horizons in themselves.