Heather Pass

Posted on May 19, 2012 by Larry Eifert

 

I painted this back in October, 2011 when we were in Washington’s North Cascades. It made it past the scan, into a frame, into the blog – but I never hit the “Post” button. For the last eight months the canvas has just sat there in my studio and also on the blog software – and the title stares at me each time I start the program. “ME, ME, Post ME” it screams, but each week I’ve sent out something else I thought was more interesting. But, now that the High-Country around the West is melting out and trails are beginning to open up, maybe it’s time to show this one.

Here’s what I wrote all those months ago, thinking I would post it then:

Heather Pass is a good 3-mile climb in the North Cascades, and while we’ve been here twice, neither were in late afternoon when the sun was doing this yellow-orange-thing. The last time we were here, there was a lone hiker camped just below this heather-filled bench, and I envyed him for his upcoming sunset and evening solitary view. Beside his single tent was a back-packer’s expresso maker, and this little spring runoff stream in the painting would be his coffee water the next morning. If there’s a reason why spending the night in a place wouldn’t be anything but glorious, I can’t think of it.

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 11″ x 14″ and $140 unframed.
A custom wood frame makes it a total of $180 and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone or if you take the frame. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

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Bristlecone Pine Sketchbook Journal

Posted on May 12, 2012 by Larry Eifert

I posted some other pages from this project a few weeks ago here. There are 11 pages of sketches that will string along the bottom of the three mural paintings I also painted, and all these will soon be installed in the new visitor center at the Schulman Grove of ancient bristlecone pines in California. When it opens in a few months, this is going to be really fun to see, at least I hope so. Standing in front of the three huge paintings, these sketchbook panels will show how the paintings were developed, like a field sketchbook.

I’ve always loved field sketching. It gets to the heart of things, of using your eyes to see. You get to watch the results flowing out of your hand like magic. To me, it’s the very basic process of creating art, and something I’ve done all my life. Someone recently asked me if I ever took mind-enhancing drugs. No, I said, instead I draw nature outdoors and in the field, and to do it well requires great attention to details, color, texture and how nature has evolved in a single place. I mean, how much more clearly could a person see this amazing and vibrant world than with a pencil in your hand?

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

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A Small World – Japanese Tsunami Debris

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Larry Eifert

Friday, March 11, 2011 – or about 60 weeks ago, we all heard or shocking news about the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. It sure seemed like a long way from us here in the U.S., didn’t it?

Well, Nancy and I just spent a few days out in the “West End” hiking the beaches of Olympic National Park, and I’m hear to report that all those beaches are now receiving a pretty good dose of flotsam from Japan.

These images should enlarge with a click, but if you look closely here, you can see the maker’s mark on this buoy. There were LOTS of these, and we guessed because they rode high on the waves, the wind brought them here quicker than what’s still coming along out there. All the floats we examined had one anchor hole broken off, as if it had been surgically removed by a huge force – like 1″ solid plastic broken with a snap.

And here’s a grapefruit juice carton with the print-date of February, 2011. The red lid kept it floating, all 5,000 miles and all those winter storms – a tribute to plastic/paper cartons, don’t you think? As a painter of big-walls, I know that blue is the last color left standing after the sun bakes everything else out of it.

As we were walking down those pristine beaches, watching whales and sea otters, pelicans and marbled murrelets all in one view, I just couldn’t get over the fact that the last time these objects were seen or touched by people might have been the last time those folks saw anything at all. It was a sobering feeling to unscrew that grapefruit juice carton and inhale the smell of juice (yes, it still smelled of grapefruit) that someone might have had for breakfast on March 11, 2011.

Thanks for reading this week. It’s not art, but I think worthy of a post.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

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The Dosewallips – Spring Runoff

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Larry Eifert

 

Click on the painting and it should enlarge in your browser.

No presketch on this one, so I can’t show you the process - it seemed pretty clear so I just started painting. After Nancy posted our exploits along the Northeast Olympic’s Dosewallips River a few days ago, and thereby beat me to a post about its stunning beauty, I put aside a couple of more serious projects to finish this painting up. I was moved by the late afternoon sun was streaming through the canyon and really lighting up the streamside alders. It just seemed like a painting, which it now is. With a big snow pack upslope quickly turning to water, the river was loud, frantic, seemingly in a very great hurry to hit the ocean just a few miles downstream to the east. What a place! What a place to live – and paint!

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished board, 24″ x 48″ and is offered here for $900 unframed, but Nancy thinks there may be a place here at home it needs to go for awhile. However, I have a custom gold frame with a linen liner makes it a total of $990 and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone or if you take the frame. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

Thanks for reading this week. Can you hear the river’s roar?
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

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Thriller – A Sculpture Project on the Side

Posted on April 29, 2012 by Larry Eifert

 

What’s THIS in our meadow? Is it a classic boat? A sculpture? For me it’s both, plus a bunch of fun? It’s a Lightning class 19-foot sloop, #7108 that was built at the Livingston Boat Shop in Michigan in 1959. Old-growth cedar at it’s finest!

In 2010 after we sold Sea Witch, our 1940 sloop, it took me exactly 10 months to find this boat. Rebuilt by a very fine gentleman in the Bay Area, it was perfect for crashing around our local bay, and if you live in Port Townsend, you have to have a classic wood boat to crash around the bay.

I sailed it all last summer, but promised myself I wouldn’t make any changes to it until this past winter when I got a good feeling for the boat and what I wanted it to look like. So, with new paint colors and bright varnish almost everywhere, we’re now closing in on a spring launch. I still have to refit the sails, do some sewing and tighten things up, but we’re closing in.

To me, this is high art, sculpture that’s both form and function working together, and just pure beautiful. Under one of the original fittings, I found what appears to be the original deck color, a 1959-era pale-green that coincidentally I had already chosen as a color that would match the cedar planking. How’s that for intuitive thinking?

The boat carries a spinnaker, main and jib, and let me tell you all that when this boat gets off the wind on to a reach in some wind, it’s a real rush when I feel it rise up on a plane and take off. The first time it happened, I said “wow, what a Thriller of a ride” and so that apprears to be the boat’s new name. Stay tuned to more posts as I get this thing together more. Just consider it an on-going art project – which it is!

Quite a sled, don’t you think? Want to go for a sail?

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

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