It took a while for Olivia to figure out what to do with these silky crayon markers that she got for her first birthday.  After she showed interest in drawing with a pen in one of my notebooks, I decided to get them out.  Previously she was only interested in taking the caps off of them all and pushing them around on the floor.

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While on vacation I began to think that Olivia has grown so much mentally that she might be able to begin sitting for me for longer periods of time like she did before she began to sit up or walk.  We were back from the States only a couple of days when I put her on the bed with an unopened box of toothpaste.  It took her long enough to open that box that I was able to paint her, and when she stood up, she knew what "sit down" meant and humored my requests.  Didn't take very long, this one.  Just long enough.

Maurice Logan was a member of the Society of Six, a group of San Francisco artists who made a point of color, painting small and fast to capture the world surrounding the Bay in the early 20th century.  Flipping through a book on this group on the Society of Six, my brother pointed out a painting made in Point Richmond a century ago when it was the end of the line for passenger trains coming to San Francisco.  I completed a small group of paintings on the hills there in 2013 (right painting) and visited the area again in 2014 and then just a few weeks ago.  No paintings.  Maybe on my next return trip.

This painting hangs in my parent's home, about an hour's drive from where it was painted, at the top of Petit Jean Mountain in Arkansas.  I have a similar one on my wall here in Chongqing, a painting up on Highway 7 near Jasper.  I think a lot about these paintings now.  I had wished to complete a series of these overlook paintings, memories of Arkansas.  Maybe one day I will.