This second round of little oil studies are mostly sold, but the top few are still available. Drop me an email at larryeifert@gmail.com if you’re interested. This probably won’t be a Christmas gift unless you live on the Olympic Peninsula.
They’re either linen canvas board or stretched canvas, mostly 5×7, framed outside measurements are 7″ x 9″. Shipping isn’t much as they’re small paintings. Email me if you’d like: larryeifert@gmail.com
Nuthatch Nest Hole sorry, it’s sold.
Song Sparrow portrait study. sorry, it’s sold.
Red-breasted Nuthatch still available at $95 framed. Oil on canvas board.
Olympic National Park alpine meadows SORRY, IT’S SOLD
Brown Creeper portrait study: Oil on canvas board 5″ x 7″ $95 framed.
Chestnut backed Chickadee – Sorry, it’s sold.
Oregon Junco on yellow willow leaves. Sorry, it’s sold.
11″ x 14″ Song Sparrow in winter twigs. Sorry, it’s sold.
After a very long time, I recently circled back around to painting with oils. Here are some that are currently available. I started with this medium a half a century ago, and I just thought it was time to get back to it. There’s a color glow with oils that acrylic can’t get, at least I don’t think so.
I’m still making paintings in acrylic and watercolor, still have a bunch of new projects scheduled for parks (Hawaii Volcanoes right now). But these little 5″ x 7″ paintings (that’s the canvas size) are using various fluid mediums as I’m trying to find my footing with this. For some, I used linseed oil, some with odorless turpentine or a mix of both, some with an addition of either cobalt drier or Liquin (a dryer). All are now far enough along to offer them here in a series of blog posts.
This one is a black-capped chickadee on a lichen-covered branch. SORRY, IT’S SOLD.
Barn swallow in flight, as I worked out painting wet on wet.
Golden-crowned kinglet from our little forest here, taking a winter nap in the leafless branches of a willow. SORRY, IT’S SOLD.
It’s been a few months since I posted my recent paintings here. Some of my subscribers have written asking what’s happened, but it hasn’t been for lack of work to show – I’ve been busy. In fact, it’s been on of the busiest years in decades for both of us. I’ve decided that’s really no good excuse, so expect to see more soon.
This is one of three paintings for MacKaye Landing on Lopez Island – in the San Juan Islands of Washington State. It’s another restoration project to enhance altered shorelines and make them healthier for forage fish, salmon’s main food source. I THINK, these three a total of 38 waysides in the San Juan Islands, a place I called a summer home in the 1980’s, so they all have good meaning for me.
They were commissioned by the County, another project like the Orcas Landing panels a few years ago. Katie and Frankie wrangled me into submission (in good ways) to produce these. I’ll show the others in the next post.
This photo below is from the boat ramp area where the panels will go, a peaceful and beautiful place, Canada’s Vancouver Island in the far distance, the Cattle Point Lighthouse just peeking out – where I have two murals (one is the 37′ Indian wall). This is a prime launch for kayakers and fishermen aiming for the archipelago of islands near Cattle Pass. A truly beautiful place.
As I was deciding what this habitat panel would look like, I happened to view a YouTube video of two Canadians doing a kayak trip here, with lots of underwater photography showing the amazing variety of aquatic life along these south-facing rocks, which I love to paint – so it was easy to focus on that. Below is the concept sketch I made just after watching that video.
I anchored here several times in the 1980’s, and as I remember, it was a rolling anchorage with swells coming in at 90 degrees from the boat’s angle – not good for sleeping. And here I am, back with some art that will live here for decades – and be seen long after I’m gone – my favorite public art. For me, it’s a small world in hopefully a long life of art – and I’m just trying to remain relevant while I’m still here.
Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.
Recently finished some new art for wayside panels at Deception Pass State Park here in Washington State. I’ve lost count of the number of installations I have at this park, a dozen maybe, with a couple even having been washed out to sea in a storm last year.
These three are for a salmon habitat restoration project, which I’ve sure been painting a lot of recently. Washington is betting big on salmon restoration, spending billions (yes) removing road culverts, rock walls on the beaches, fixing it so young salmon and forage fish can have places to live. I seem to be THE guy for interpreting this, and have made dozens in the past few years. Here are three.
So, this place was once a ferry landing. It didn’t last long before the state built the nearby bridge, but in the process, the ferry landing really messed up the beach, making it difficult for fish to feel at home. So, fast forward a century, and Northwest Straits Foundation managed the removal of the mess, putting it back to as natural as possible. It was my job to show this.
This panel went to a similar messed-up beach just to the north of Hoypus Point, same reasons, same fish, but along a neighborhood of houses.
Here’s the result at Hoypus, the ferry landing road is now a trail, the beach put back to gravel and forest duff. The only man-made installation here now is going to be my panels.
Thanks to Lisa Kaufman from Northwest Straits Foundation (on the right of Nancy), and Joy Sullivan at the state park, for allowing me to paint yet more forage fish and my other favorite critters.
This painting is 16″ x 20″ acrylic on canvas, and is available. Email me if you’re interested at larryeifert@gmail.com. It’s also available with the nice Taos school inspired frame (like you see here) and I already have a shipping crate ready to go. The offering price framed as you see it here is $950 – shipping cost is extra but it will go double boxed UPS.
The Nooksack River, just south of the Canadian border in Washington State. It’s one of our favorite Northwest rivers because it drains water from two of the greatest Pacific Northwest peaks, Mt Baker and Mount Shucksan. North Cascades National Park: big mountains, big glacial power, and the river valley shows that with miles of beautifully sculptured river rock. I’ve painted this area before, but pulled this painting together after I found an unfinished canvas just waiting for me. For some reason, I started this then it just sat there. I especially liked the way the foreground goes blue at the bottom, showing the sky overhead, the water tinted with glacier flour that always makes these river more aquamarine than cobalt.
Someone already asked me about the ducks in the painting, a pair of common mergansers, male has the green head. In the Northwest, these guys spend winters out in salt water. Then in spring, mated pairs head back up rivers to nest in tree cavities beside their grocery stores – the rivers. Their routine is to float leisurely downstream from pool to pool, diving for fish, sometimes resting on a rock in midstream. Then they fly back upstream and start the routine all over again.
This, believe it or not, this was my model for the painting. I like to take an idea and just make it up into a painting that’s far beyond what I originally saw. Let’s see, bigger rocks, add the birds, make the thing glow with Hudson River School late afternoon light.
Again: This painting is 16″ x 20″ acrylic on canvas, and is available. Email me if you’re interested at larryeifert@gmail.com. It’s also available with the nice Taos school inspired frame and I already have a shipping crate ready to go. The offering price framed as you see it here is $950 – shipping cost is extra but it will go double boxed UPS.
For those not from the Olympic Peninsula, the Sol Duc is one of the most beautiful rivers here, and I’ve painted it many times. In fact, if you drive the 17-mile park road from the gate to Sol Duc Falls Trailhead, you’ll pass 24 Eifert paintings along the way on turnout signs, exhibits and information kiosks. Like an art gallery in the old-growth.
This little painting is actually of the North Fork of the Sol Duc, a fantastic hike that goes up and over a ridge before dropping to a thigh-deep ice water crossing requiring boots and pants off. On the other side, it just doesn’t get any nicer, with plunge pools carved into bedrock and a meandering trail that plows up the canyon to the river’s source. Of course, in the dead of winter, this painting is just a nice memory of it, and that’s why I painted it.
This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $149 framed as you see it. Outside edge of the frame is about 12″ x 15″. This custom frame has a triple liner and glass. Shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone. This is the original painting, NOT a print. Email us for details.
This painting is 16″ x 20″ acrylic on canvas, and is available. Email me if you’re interested at larryeifert@gmail.com. It’s available with the nice Taos school inspired frame and I already have a shipping crate ready to go. Shipping would be extra but we usually ship UPS so it won’t be much.
This painting was inspired by a day hike up the North Fork of the Sol Duc River in nearby Olympic National Park. Not many hikers get here, as it requires a breathe-taking thigh-deep river crossing, but it’s worth every icy step. Once on the east side of the river, the trail goes for miles along the banks, from pool to pool and finally turns into a vague rambling through streamside brush. In places there are sandstone-scoured potholes, meadows beneath huge big-leaf maple groves, just a glorious Olympic ramble. This place has produced several paintings from me, all similar, all emotional light studies of this pristine river’s journey from alpine down into the main stem of the Sol Duc.
Where does this trail start and end? On Olympic National Park’s Sol Duc River Road there’s a parking area just a quarter mile upstream from Salmon Cascades. The trail heads upslope on the east side of the road, the drops to the North Fork in half a mile past the ford. It’s about eight miles upslope to an old CCC shelter, then a few more miles to Mount Appleton and Blue Lake. While the main Sol Duc trail system is mobbed in summer, almost no one makes it this pristine place, just a raven’s flight of a couple of minutes.
This painting is 16″ x 20″ acrylic on canvas, and is available. Email me if you’re interested at larryeifert@gmail.com. It’s also available with the nice Taos school inspired frame (like you see here) and I already have a shipping crate ready to go. The offering price framed as you see it here is $950 – shipping cost is extra but it will go double boxed UPS.
These are some of the other new paintings for the Mount St Helens Visitor Center at Silver Lake, Washington. Commissioned by Washington State Parks, they are part of the interior exhibit plan and it’s complicated enough that I’ll just let the art speak for itself. There’s more than this, and the last post I published, but you’ll get the idea.
I wanted to explain the newspaper at the top. When I started painting these a few months ago, I opened one of my file cabinets to find maybe a map of the park, and this thing jumped out at me. It’s been sitting here now for 43 years, as I bought it for $2 right after the eruption – and I imagined it saying “me, me, I’m finally here to help”. And it did, as several of these paintings are direct results of the photos in this yellowing magazine. Serendipity, I think the word is.
This painting deserves a bit of explanation. Left side, immediately after the blast, right side might be today, 43 years after the blast. The elk returned immediately, and in their footsteps in the ash, water gathered and supported many critters as they expanded back into the ash zone.
And below is the mountain today (or, two summers ago when we hiked there). It’s recovering nicely and it’s always fun to see how nature finds a way to cover every inch of ground, even after it’s been blown to smithereens.
I’ve been working on this project since May, but the painting didn’t really start until August. I’ll bet over a million brush strokes! I’m close to finishing painting 24 images for the big revamping of the Washington State Park’s visitor center at Mt St Helens National Monument. I’m told it’s one of the biggest interpretive projects ever for Washington State Parks.
I’ve already made some art for this fantastic park before, but that was a series of outside wayside panels for the US Forest Service placed around the mountain, plus a big painting that we eventually made into a puzzle. This current effort is at Silver Lake on the park’s west side, a big visitor center built right after the eruption in 1980. I’m working with EDX in Seattle who did the designs and asked me to do the art. Sure glad they did – it’s been interesting.
For this post, I’ll focus on just the wetlands tabletop, 17 feet long and 4 feet wide, it’s one of the most complex visitor center exhibits I’ve painted. Other parts of the project will be posted soon.
I have few finished photos of this, but I did get the tabletop main painting scanned – a whopping 4.5 gigabits of data that will be printed on aluminum (I think).
Drawing and the beginnings of the painted art.Final painting for the tabletop, about 17′ wide.Part of the left side of the tabletop.
The tabletop has all sorts of lift lids showing hidden critters beneath them. There are spinners that show the eruption, another with the evolution of Silver Lake. It’s a very busy thing and I’m hoping kids will love it.
On my next post, I’ll get into the smaller pieces of art, then the second wall (an entirely different theme and painting 14′ long).
Nancy on the boardwalk at Silver Lake. Enough wood here to build several houses, and it’s in good shape – goes on for half a mile. The volcano is straight ahead but still 25m away.
In case you don’t remember what the mountain looks like, here’s a puzzle we did some years ago for it.
It’s been awhile since a blog post. All our websites were hacked by a very creepy cripto outfit and it’s taken me months to get it going again. We’re good now, but way behind posting what I’ve been painting. Here’s one, a big 48″ wayside for Grand Tetons National Park, right beside the Snake River below the Jackson Dam.
You can see the sketch changes a bit as it evolved to the final painting, but the basic concepts are still there. I started this in spring, then summer made it so park staff was swamped with millions of tourists.
This is a draft mockup of the final panel, design by EDX in Seattle. Nice working with friends start to finish on these as the project goes through various contractors. Custom Southern Exhibits is doing the fabrication, an Alabama company I’ve worked with many times before.
And here’s the location, right on the beach to the right. With one of the most dramatic backdrops in America, I’m happy to keep doing this stuff, the same job I’ve had for decades – making art for National Parks, the “best idea America ever had”.
Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.
