A New Life for Lahonton Wetlands

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Larry Eifert

My first Nature Conservancy commission was this mural of the marshes east of Reno, Nevada. The original painting hangs in their offices in Reno, along with about 2.000 posters floating around the West. Now, almost 20 years later, another image will be installed in the new BLM California Trail Interpretive Center, eight miles west of Elko, Nevada. I just sent the final scan and it’ll be 17 feet wide by 10 feet high, proving that art never dies, it just gets reprinted.

Back when this was painted, there weren’t digital scanners like we have today. I remember I had it photographed in Sacramento and found the 8″ x 10″ film postive transparency still there in our lock box on Kodak film that’s not even made today. It was a color-perfect shot and scanned up 2500% just beautifully. How big was that file for a 17′-wide image? The Photoshop layers file was 2.4 gigabits, and I admit my computer took some time to process it. Smokin’.

It was almost 20 years ago when Nancy and I were doing field research for this painting in the dry lakebeds and marshes around Fallon, Nevada. It was the only time either of us have been on an airboat - basically an airplane engine and prop on the back of a big rowboat. What a thrill it was to just glide over these bull rushes and “fly” around miles of marshes. We eventually ended up at a beach just like this one where the US Fish and Wildlife Service guides showed us fresh water clams, reminders of the ancient Paleo landscape when these dwindling lakes were giants from Ice Age runoff.

I have a new show at Gallery Nine in Port Townsend this month. Here’s press on it from the Peninsula Daily News, and here’s the Gallery Nine website with more information. Come on down if you’re here.

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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Low Water at Point Wilson

Posted on January 28, 2012 by Larry Eifert

Low-Water-at-Point-Wilson

This is, I think, one of the most intriguing places here in our little town of Port Townsend, and I’ve painted it often. Every container ship, submarine, aircraft carrier, sailboat or killer whale going into Puget Sound has to go right by here, and at low tide it’s a pretty dramatic and busy place. On a recent walk, we were here on a minus tide, just before the big rush of water began that would completely submerge this spot, so I spent a few minutes of peace and quite, unusual without waves or noise -just a perfect moment to compose a painting.

I get LOTS of comments on this blog about my painting process. Do I paint on location (well, certainly not when it’s 45 degrees), do I work from a photo (it’s just a basic starting point, like a sketch where I can remember details)? So here’s the reference photo I took with my phone-camera. An interesting transformation from photo to painting, don’t you think? Where’d the kelp go? Well, after working with it on the sketch, I realized kelp was completely unnecessary and made the rocks look like mush. Better to focus on the luminousity of the water instead. I say, learn to spot a locked door and climb in a window instead!

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on hardboard, 22″ x 28″ and $700 unframed.
We have some good frames for this one, but it’s a big enough painting that we’ll figure that out when you buy it. It’s going into a show at Gallery Nine, so if you’d like it, better jump quickly. Not that I’m bragging, but the last one went in 20 minutes and there were five who wanted it. This is the original painting, NOT a print and it’s being sold without the gallery commission. There will soon be prints of this on the website for our normal prices - here’s an example of another one).
Email us for details if you’re interested.

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. She’s just posted a blog about the new sea otter pup at the Seattle Aquarium. Amazing.

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A Brown Pelican – Really?

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Larry Eifert

Brown pelican in the Boat Haven!

Thanks to DDT, by 1970 the California brown pelican was almost gone from the West Coast of the United States. Even today, these great fishermen with a wingspan of 6.5 feet only nest on the Channel Islands off Los Angeles. Sometimes, but not often, a few migrate northward during the late summer.

So, imagine my amazement when Nancy spotted one here in Port Townsend in the middle of January – and while it was snowing to boot. There he was, down in the marina right under the fish boat dock awaiting the next toss-out of not-so-good fish. And he probably wasn’t cold either, as the water this time of year is a full 20 degrees warmer than the air.

So, like the journalist that I am, here’s a little painting of Port Townsend’s wintering brown pelican. My hat’s off to him! And my hat’s off to Rachel Carson, an old family friend who stood up to the chemical industry over 50 years ago so this bird could eventually make its way to Port  Townsend in January, 2012.

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on paper, 7″ x 10″ and $85 unframed.

A nice custom frame with a double mat and glass makes it a total of $110 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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Going to Lewis Lake

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Larry Eifert

This is another painting from late summer – and possibly my favorite from the past few months. Just haven’t had time to post it.

“Going to Lewis Lake” not, “Taking the trail to Lewis Lake” – because there isn’t one (the trail, that is). In fact, we didn’t make it to Lewis Lake because the snowy boulder hopping was a bit much and we didn’t have our ice gear. Not that I minded – the view right here was as far as we got and was sure worth the climb, Lewis Lake or not. If there’s anything I love dearly to paint, it’s an alpine landscape with all sorts of craggy angles and snow in both sun and shade. The North Cascades are my idea of  painterly paradise.

I’ve thought a lot about why this is a beautiful image to me, and I’m pretty sure it’s partly the idea that these landscapes are delicately fragile and gigantically solid – soft and deadly, both at the same time. It’s not a place you can relax. Contrast the little soft-stemmed alpine lupine and paintbrush to places still snow-covered – to the ominous sounds of distant rockfall as thawing ice loosens yet another boulder. It’s a place of wildly grand contrasts painters love, at least I do, even if it was difficult to find a place to sit and compose a future painting without squashing an entire little alpine garden.

I’ve decided to hang on to this one for a bit – just because I like it so much. So, at the moment it’s not for sale. We don’t ever really hang art in our own home, mainly because we have mostly big windows and almost no walls – but this one found its way to one of the few spots, and I enjoy reliving this grand hiking experience every time I see it. 

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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Exit Glacier – Kenai Fiords National Park

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Larry Eifert

Commissioned by the National Park Service and funded by Alaska Geographic for the new nature center in Kenai Fiords National Park. My task here was to show the ecosystem of this emerging landscape so recently covered by the glacier. You can see the trail winding through a young forest populating the outwash plain of the giant glacier connected to the even bigger Harding Icefield (bigger than the state of Rhode Island). Just a few miles from Seward, Alaska, this is one of the few glaciers you can actually walk up to and touch. It’s a bright summer scene, the way most people see it, but when we were here in September everything was already turning ochre and there was a rain and flood-event going on. I blogged about that on September 14, 2011 when I got the location sketch posted here. A few weeks later I posted the finished sketch here. It’s fun to see the evolution of the painting from concept to finished mural, but I know you guys don’t like to click through, so here’s the concept sketch again, but this time as it was happening (photo by Nancy Cherry Eifert over my right shoulder).

 And here’s the sketch drawn back here in the studio.

Soon there will be a high-pressure laminate panel of this painting for the center. Since it’s closed in winter, no heat, and it IS Alaska, it was decided that the original will hang downtown in the main offices. Next spring we’re hoping for puzzles and other products, so stay tuned.

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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