Last week I posted another outdoor wayside panel – the spring version of this same place. Now, here’s the second panel about summer at the Naas Preserve on Whidbey Island prairie – prescribed burns, summer flowers and pollinators, a real riot of color. They’re both going to be installed at just north of my home in Port Townsend. Not easy making a nice painting with a fire in it, but I’ve actually painted several fire images before for a National Wildlife Refuge in North Dakota. This one was much more fun.
These paintings require lots of field trips and research time. It’s the best part of it, with both of us joining forces to figure out details from white-crowned sparrows to goldenrod. Sure, field guides tell me what the thing looks like, but not how they attach to the ground, or how they look in summer when the landscape is drying out, or how does the sparrow grab onto the goldenrod as it’s singing. Here’s Nancy working on some strawberry plants that the Whidbey – Camano Land Trust is growing in a small nursery at the site. Later, I put all these images on my tablet for reference at the easel.
So what’s the point of these outdoor panels? To me, they’re like an an outdoor art gallery. Some trails have a couple of dozen of these panels, and I love to imagine people hiking along enjoying the nature around them but maybe not understanding it. Behold, here’s a nice painting with some words to help them out. While I still sell paintings to private collectors (who then hang them on their walls, never to be seen in public again), I think I see these outdoor efforts might be a higher calling. It’s public art in the best way, don’t you think?
Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert
Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.
Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.
Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs
And Click here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.