Larry Eifert –

Straight ahead with the same old thing……..

Led Down The Path!

I grew up in Springfield Illinois, where my mother (author and illustrator of 20 books – mostly about nature) was editor of a museum nature magazine for 36 years. Her work is still in print after 50 years – and, like me, she thought nothing of traveling 5,000 miles on various river workboats for book research – or hiring a fishing boat to get to those remote refuge islands off the Gaspe Peninsula in Quebec Canada. My dad was very influential too. As education curator for the Illinois State Museum with a double-masters in ecology and English, shepherded thousands of kids (and me, too) through the museum. He also instilled in me a reverence for life. As an Army GI in WW2, he never carried a gun, although he was shot at by snipers he could clearly see in the hills above the camp in New Caledonia. “Shoot a gun, you’re out of the family,” I remember hearing often. From these pretty rarefied beginnings, I gained early mentoring from both parents and museum staff – and never really looked back. Mine is a continuing passion instilled from many sources, from the boyhood time spent at, say, Rachel Carson’s home in Maine, to the museum babysitters who said “Here – draw this giraffe and don’t bug us.” To me, life was all about nature and discovering it.

Let’s Not Waste Any Time About It!

I opened my first retail art gallery in 1968 at age 21 in Waubaushene, Ontario Canada-and I’ll bet you’ve never heard of the place. To me, it was an early beginning for something that flowered later. Those were days of dog-sledding to the post office, bus rides with Eskimos and Indians heading for Toronto, buying fire-smoked moose clothing to sell in the store – and learning how to be an artist. Money was, well, tight! After coming to the Pacific Northwest in 1972 in search of “rainy forests and wind-swept beaches,” I opened the Eifert Gallery in Ferndale California, and during the 1980’s and early 90’s and exhibited both my own work and many other artists. It was here that I learned about painting parks and availing my work to them too.

The success in Ferndale allowed me to hone my skills and gain a much wider national audience. By 1990, I had expanded my vision to include parks, refuges and non-profits as clients for large specific commissions. With Nancy Cherry Eifert, who also contributes to many of these projects and really runs the business side of all this, I have succeeded beyond anything imaginable – at least for what I intended. I now believe that no artist, living or dead, has painted more art in our National Parks. But this takes two to make it work. Without Nancy’s unwavering support and help, it just wouldn’t have happened! Today, Nancy and I live in Port Townsend, Washington near Olympic National Park. Check out our STUDIO PAGE for details.

A Short But Wide Road

It’s difficult to believe that here I am now in my late 70’s, still plugging away at the same old discipline I began so long ago. And it seems, in some ways, like I just began this only yesterday. I can’t see any difference in my approach to this life, except I don’t care to sleep on the cold ground as often as I once did – but I STILL do. With ultralight gear, I still love backpacking up a mountain.

Lots of fun projects and experiences have come and gone, like the two 90-foot walls Nancy and I painted in the Mojave Desert to teach locals about their own backyard.  Such as the park visitor center mural that was being painted in a garage, and a desert tortoise just walked in from the desert to be a model, just when I needed him. Nancy fed him greens while i painted him.

Or the trip from Seattle to Alaska on my classic wooden sloop, or the second trip down Baja into the Sea of Cortez aboard our 50′ ketch, painting all the way and mailing the work back to the gallery at home – and returning to find all the paintings had been sold so I didn’t get to see a one. In fact, it has ALL been a wonderful journey and I surely hope it continues for some time to come! Most importantly, a deep and sincere thanks to so many people that believed in what I do to support it. Without this sustaining help none of it would have happened – or continues to happen.