I’ve never painted this bird species, and in Seward Alaska recently there were lots of them at the SeaLife Center, so, I just had to take a stab at a painting. We heard someone trying to describe the white on kittiwakes as “the whitest white.” I’d go farther. To me it is so white as to be a void, as if touching one would put your hand into a cosmic hole so deep and profound is that lack of color. They’re a very localized species, nesting on offshore islands of Alaska and spending winters in the Bering Sea, and their populations are down by about a third in recent decades as are most pelagic birds and sea animals around there. Black-legged kittiwakes were there as well, and we saw them on rocks just like this out out in Resurrection Sound with the Stellers sealions near the caving glaciers.

It’s always thrilling for me to see a creature as soft and vulnerable as this making a home in such a forbidding and harsh place. I tried to show that in the colors. Glacier-sculptured rock, windblown and water-blasted cliffs are this creature’s life, never mind the winters of driving snow, ice and hurricane-force winds. And we complain about so many unimportant  and casual things. What do they complain about?

 This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 11″ x 14″ and $160 unframed.
A mahogany frame with linen liner 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, but prints will be available soon.
Email us for details.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

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