Season’s Greetings – Sunset, Sunday, 8 April 2012

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

For Passover, Easter, and every form of faith, public or personal.

Scorched Purple – Sunset, Friday, 6 April 2012

William Van Doren, SCORCHED PURPLE. Sunset from Lynchburg, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

Volare (Sunset, Monday, 18 April 2011)

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

Sunset, Saturday, 3 April 2010

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

Some of my reactions to the sunset aren’t necessarily what you might expect from a loyal and dedicated daily follower of the sky.

Like, “What! You mean it’s changing again!?”

This fit of consternation can be attributed largely to the amount of concentration it takes to ‘assemble’ a sky while observing it, in order to paint it. I had absorbed this one pretty completely a couple of times before it changed yet again. On top of everything else, it simply became more Easteresque, with the changes – I guess purple and gold relate to some sort of ecclesiastical association.

Before this, say what you may about crucifixions, Passovers, resurrections, Calvarys, hosannas, and so on, the day’s warmth, its streaked blue sky, pale green trees, yellow flowers and pink cherry blossoms were about as sweetly pastel as it gets here. Chalk it up to the Easter Bunny.

Sunset, Saturday, 3 October 2009

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

Although the rising of the full moon here would appear to be tomorrow night – our moonrise tomorrow will coincide with sunset – for many Asian people living all over the world tonight is the most important night of the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. The Moon Festival is a major holiday for the Chinese, and is also observed, wth variations, by people from Japan, Korea and Vietnam.

We spent part of the afternoon putting together battery-operated paper lanterns to give tonight to friends who own a Chinese restaurant; they gave us beautiful lotus-flavored ‘mooncakes’. I often paint the Mid-Autumn moonrise for them, although possibly they’re sick of them by now!

I was thinking it’s a little sad that in Western culture, although we have major holidays keyed to a phase of the moon, such as Easter and Passover, I couldn’t come up with any holidays that are in any way about the sun or the moon. I guess those went the way of the pagans. We do have one holiday of sorts on behalf of a heavenly body, and that would be Earth Day.

Tonight I found a possible connection between the ancient, 3,000-year-old Chinese Moon Festival and our modern Earth Day. Among the many stories associated with the Moon Festival is a myth that always begins with the premise that the earth once had ten suns. Each day a different one of the ten suns would light the earth. (I love this idea, of course; you could tell me there were a million different suns and I would believe you.) But one day all ten suns showed up at once, and so threatened to burn up the world.

The hero of the myth is an archer who shot down nine of the suns. That’s where Earth Day comes in, and climate change. Perhaps one day our heroes will be the archers who shoot down our nine too many suns.

Sunset, Thursday, 9 April 2009

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

I watched the beginning of this sunset while cutting firewood down in a place I call The Cove, a park-like stretch of big oaks and grass that slopes down and narrows into woods at the source of a stream. (We rent a marginally functional farmhouse that happens to be the only residence on 1000+ acres, but more about that some other time.) I’d been told that our developer-landlord’s most valuable handyman had been permitted to give his daughter a party somewhere on the property this evening, and I’d assumed this meant a birthday party. But when I noticed that the two balloons they tied to the posts by the cattle guard were dark blue and white – and then saw kids being driven in and they were wearing tall, light blue paper crowns – well, to quote Eric Burdon, this really blew my mind. Maybe it was a Passover party!

To understand my surprise, you need to know that the immediate vicinity is anything but a multicultural melting pot. (And of course, now I decided, since a Passover party was the coolest explanation, it must be a Passover party.) Celebrations that take place around here usually have all the decorum of a reunion picnic for dishonorably discharged Confederate enlisted men and their camp followers. (And I put it this way even though I admit to growing up with the Army of Northern Virginia as my heroes and to being always a little fascinated by the idea that I was supposed to be related to General Earl Van Dorn.) By the end of any one of these parties, in place of the earlier whoops of drunken delight, there’s a fine chance threats of murder will be clearly distinguished at distances approaching half a mile.

This party was so different, it really – well, I already said that once. Instead of rumbling pickup trucks jacked up on monster wheels, we had people driving by slowly, just as you would expect on a dirt road, in regular cars, every once in a while a child leaning forward to try to see where the party was going to be.

And I never knew exactly where it was – one of the fields beyond The Cove, or at a gazebo overlooking the ponds – but every once in a while I could hear it. It was one of those evenings – not yet warm, just mild, calm, green, falling light gold in the trees – that makes you feel Spring has really arrived. The gentle music of the kids’ laughter was the soundtrack for the sunset.