Somewhere on my website at larryeifert.com, there’s a little link to click if you have one of my paintings and would like to share it. These are some of those, a few from the past and all over 40 years old. Back in the pre-digital days, I never photographed anything, and so thousands of paintings just went out the door never to be seen again. And I’ve been doing this stuff for a very long time.

But these days, not too many know my paintings didn’t always end up in parks and refuges. I was just an amateur hack, trying to learn how to put colors and shapes on paper or canvas, and not be totally embarrassed. Nope, I never went to art school. Nope, I never thought ANY of it was good, or even almost good. But somehow I actually made a living at this and somehow evolved to something vastly different than what I paint now.

This was really a struggle for me. I had a pretty good high school art teacher and somehow I got two art classes a day. And my parents made sure I was always drawing, always. So I guess you might say the only real thing I had was determination and a passion for it, whatever that is. Being broke all the time, for decades, always helped.

This little line drawing is dated 1978, so it’s 43 years old. Boy was I timid in those days, and I can see some influence of Francis Lee Jacque, the famous museum painter. My dad had an original Jacque over his office chair at the Illinois State Museum, so that’s probably where this idea came from.

And as I was learning, I had lots and lots of help. I remember this heron came from a studio I was offered at Humboldt State University in Arcata, CA. That’s the school about half the park service staff went to, and they had a huge collection of mounted animals to study. So, there I was in a back room using those skins and mounts to learn to paint birds. The cost? I had to tell an occasional class about my process (as if I HAD a process in those days).

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

Larry Eifert

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

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings.

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.