All posts by Brush Man

With more art in America's National Parks than any other artist.
Murals, National Park Service, Wildlife

Fort Matanzas National Monument – Florida

Fort Matanzas National Monument is getting an Eifert painting.
I was recently in Florida, south of Saint Augustine at Fort Matanzas National Monument. Boy was it hot. So hot, some of the rangers actually carried towels to help dry off, the humidity was so amazing. Of course, a big camera is a big help, so it stayed cool in the car – and then each time I got out – BANG, the humidity would hit that cold camera and I couldn’t see out of it for five minutes.

I was there to research a mural that’s coming along now for the back or their park map. So, each year, some 650,000 people will get to take an Eifert painting home with them when they visit.

I got the job done, met some great people and came back to the cool Northwest – 30 degrees cooler – and have started down the path of building one of these big paintings. While the original idea was to show the nature of this place, an ecosystem very much like what it was 200 years ago when the fort was active, we veered course at the last moment and now I’m painting it as if it IS 200 years ago. As far as the wildlife is concerned, it’s about the same – amazing for a place surrounded by humans.

Above, I’m getting a royal tour by some guys that have been here decades. Between them, I’ll bet there’s 60 years of experience here – and the fourth was so smart I kept saying ‘ahhh’, or ‘ohhh’ when I realized she was far brighter than me. That’s a LOT of knowledge going along with me to help, and I really soaked it up. It’s what I do this crazy stuff for, the experiences – and this was a good one.

Here’s a view from the fort top, overlooking cannon that actually fire and looking out on the inlet it guarded. It’s a landscape altered by hurricanes, but it’s also the ONLY undredged river inlet on the entire eastern side of Florida. I let THAT sink in a bit, then sharpened my pencil.

Thanks for reading this week.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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.

New Painting Post

Art That Continues to Make Art!

I painted this underwater landscape a few years ago for the Whidbey  Camano Land Trust. It’s a large wayside that lives on the top of that bluff in the painting at the Admiralty Inlet Natural Area.

Now, a group of budding artists from Sherman Elementary School in Tacoma, Washington have taken that art and made their own rendition of it. I think it’s wonderful and wanted to show you the process and finished project.

The 5th grade class and their Makerspace Coordinator, Julie Ross, started it by dividing the painting into squares, each student taking on a portion of the painting. They used pipe cleaners, corks, beads, balloons, ceramic tiles, pom poms, yarn, fabric, noodles, recycled materials and many other unusual things. (heck, I just got to use a paint brush.)

A printed copy of the art was sectioned off.
And so it began with a few squares.
And advanced to filling in the larger area, just like I paint these big paintings.
The final effort is really quite striking, with more detail than the original art ever had.
Here it is about half finished. I can actually see pieces of the painting beginning to appear.

And one more time showing the finished collage. Pretty fun.

Makerspace is a collaborative work space inside a school, library or separate public/private facility for making, learning, exploring and sharing.  It certainly looks like this project succeeded with the very definition of collaboration, something sorely lacking in this country these days. I’m proud to have been a part of it.

Thanks for reading this week.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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.

People Paintings, US Fish Wildlife Service, Waysides, Wildlife

Malheur – Swans and the Wadatika

This could be Malheur National Wildlife Refuge – possibly 1000 years ago when the Waditiki Indians lived here, fishing and hunting the marshes during high water periods. It’s from the perspective of the Trumpeter Swans, Canada geese and ducks the Indians hunted. Looking down through the birds you see the tule and cattail houses and boats, and people going about their daily lives. I like the feeling of a gigantic landscape with a very few humans touching the land lightly. How things have changed!

I finished this painting a few days ago for Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon. This is one more of that series I’ve been working on seemingly forever, but this one I truly enjoyed, because there was so little guidance from anyone involved. This is another fairly big wayside, 60″ wide, that will be part of 3 at the Buena Vista Overlook south of Burns, Oregon. Here it is in the final form.

And here’s the original sketch of the main painting. Getting the feel of a made-up place, because who knows what it really looked  like then, what the Indians looked like, what they did or how many there were. I think I got it.

Thanks for reading this week.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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.

Murals, US Fish Wildlife Service, Waysides, Wildlife

Malheur – Buena Vista Overlook

I’ve been working on art for Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon, a continuing effort that’s finally coming together. This wayside panel I just finished is going there, telling the story of springtime water vs. fall desert. It’s been interesting to compare the two scenes – which is a completely fabricated scene. No such place exists, yet it’s at Malheur in many places.

This view is of the spring snowmelt season there, when water from the local mountains fill up this grand valley with ponds and marshes. These lakes are only a couple of feet deep at most, many are less, but the place is crammed with birds either nesting or on their way north. It’s possibly the single most important wildlife refuge in the West.

And this scene shows the same place a few months later. The lakes have dried to an almost desert landscape and the lush foliage of spring has yellowed. It was interesting to figure this out – just the cattails were challenging to understand their life-cycle.

And here is where this and two other waysides are going – Buena Vista Overlook. My new paintings will replace these old and tired ones atop a stunning view of the valley below. These are big panels, each five feet wide. They needed to be big to compete with the scene.

Call this my small effort at using art to fight our current culture of White Terrorists in America. This is the place the Bundy Gang of Thugs took over a few years ago in a Right-wing attack on our heritage. Remember? Yes, this place is OUR heritage – and then the Trump administration  pardoned them when they were sentenced for their crimes. Not enough said – but if you want to save what’s left of these places, VOTE for nature!

Thanks for reading this week.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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.

Giclee prints, Murals, National Park Service

New – Canvas Prints from Murals

Yellowstone National Park, Grand Prismatic Hot Springs

I’ve been getting many requests for one-off prints of my larger paintings. Call us disorganized, I guess, but we emptied the lock box of about 100 transparencies and digital scans, and now I  have  a new section on the website for giclee prints of paintings. Many of these can be printed wall-sized, I mean 7 to 10 feet wide, but most requests I get are more in the 3 to 4 feet size. So, if you want to see what I have up here so far, check out the ever-expanding list. Hopefully I’ll have around 100  or more when I’m finished. Some haven’t been seen in decades (I haven’t even seen them in decades either, and some are really pretty good).

Here’s another that was painted for The Nature Conservancy at Great Salt Lake. The original art is in their visitor center there, but few have seen it. It would make a pretty good canvas print, don’t you think.

Again, here’s the link to the current list.

Thanks for reading this week.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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.

Commissioned paintings, US Fish Wildlife Service, Waysides

Nesting Black Tern

I’m back in the studio working on some paintings for Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern Oregon. Seems like this project has taken years, and it has – like THREE years. But who cares if I get to paint fun stuff like black terns. This painting goes on a big wayside there – I’ll show the design later when I get more completed. 

Malheur is an amazing place at certain times of the year. Spring and Fall, it’s a key focus point for most of the migrants on the Pacific Flyway – they all come together before spreading out for the rest of their journeys. Nancy Cherry Eifert took the photo below of snow geese, and you can easily tell how these big birds got their name. It really does look like a blizzard of birds, doesn’t it? And this was just a small portion of just one group. March was when this was taken, in case you want to go.

If you remember, Malheur was where the Bundy Standoff took place three years ago. I feel a small bit of pride they’re using art to fix the damage done there, and hope the rest of this project will show people this place isn’t just about the absurdity of giving public land, OUR land, to thugs.

Thanks for reading this week.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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.

Commissioned paintings, Murals, National Park Service, Wildlife

Wind Cave NP Site Visit

What’s this big guy doing on our hood? Attacking a brand new rental car – starting with licking the bumper and then advancing to the really fun stuff. Damage! See that foot-long horn (one of a pair) on top of a 2,000lb creature with the manners of a child? I loved every minute of it.

Here we were at Wind Cave National Park in the Black Hills of South Dakota. We’ve been on a site visit, researching, photographing and sketching for a new and really interesting project. Wind Cave has one of the most amazing caves we’ve ever been in, 150-some miles of it, and also super high-quality mixed grass prairie up top with hundreds of bison, elk, pronghorn, deer and prairie dogs. A feast for our eyes.

This is pre-sketch drawing number 8, placed in the design grid on the back of their new map guide. 750,000 people come here each year and this will be the handout they all take home.
And this is drawing number 1, beginning with some vague notion of underground vs. above ground prairie and Black Hills. Compare this to the top one and it shows how things progress and evolve in my head as I do these things on location – no studio time, no time to think, just draw – and then I have to present this as a program to park staff at the end.
Nervous? I used to be but it’s just life on some higher level now.
National Park Service staff and me, left, at the highest point in the park. We were discussing how often this location gets struck by lightning, which was happening. Photo by Nancy, who took hundreds of others. Melinda, next to me, came from the East Coast to help on this.

Stay tuned as this painting develops. It will be about 5′ x 4′ and be filled with many more critters, flowers and details – especially in the cave where some of the most interesting hang from the ceiling (no, not bats). If you follow me, you’ll see the entire progression from this messy beginning to a finished ‘thing’. 

Thanks for reading this week.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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.

Stay tuned as this painting develops. It will be about 5′ x 4′ and be filled with many more critters, flowers and details – especially in the cave where some of the most interesting hang from the ceiling (no, not bats). If you follow me, you’ll see the entire progression from this messy beginning to a finished ‘thing’. 

Thanks for reading this week.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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.

New Painting Post, Waysides, Wildlife

Rosario Tide Pools

I just polished these three outdoor wayside panels for Washington State Parks. Soon they’ll be installed at Rosario Beach, Deception Pass State Park near Anacortes, right on the beach at one of the most heavily-explored tide pool areas in Washington. The three paintings tell the stories of how the tide works to create this amazingly rich ecosystem, how people messed it all up with boots and flip-flops – and finally how to walk here without screwing it up again.

I want to show you the third panel, the one about their rope path. These tide pools were decimated by thousands of feet, but the park stretched a yellow rope out to the best pools and signs (like this one) tell people to ‘Follow the Ropes”. It worked, amazingly enough, and the tide pool life returned – crabs and anemones, kelp and sculpins. It was such an easy idea, and now the place is returning to normal. Seeing this is one of the many reasons I still get a charge out of painting art for public places.

These panels are 36″ x 24″ and will be made of high-pressure laminate and probably last longer than I will.

Thanks for reading this week.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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.

Commissioned paintings, Murals, New Painting Post, Waysides, Wildlife

Lime Kiln and Orca Whales

I received some installation photos for my Lime Kiln Point Lighthouse paintings. Everyone seems to like them, so I thought I’d share it all here for the record. I painted these last winter for Washington State Parks with EDX Exhibits in Seattle. Installation and these photos were by Marius at Doty Signs in Seattle.

This lighthouse is THE place to watch orca whales up close in the wild. There’s possibly no place on Earth you can get closer to wild whales without getting on a boat, and in summer, people line the shoreline here to watch the killer whale families feeding on salmon right in front of them. This is a big deal since the southern population of orcas is endangered and it’s not looking good for a recovery. It’s a thrilling experience to see them, and I’m proud to say my stuff now explains what people are looking at. Plus, there are one or two really nice looking pieces of art!

This is sort of a big deal for me, too, as new rules don’t allow boats to approach these endangered animals, leaving Lime Kiln as the best viewing in the Northwest. It’s also a place I know well, since I had “October”, my 40-foot sloop tied in nearby Friday Harbor in the ’80s – my ‘painting platform’ as I sailed from San Diego to Alaska and most places in between. I have history here. Nancy and I, decades later aboard our 45′ floating home ‘Rumpy’ came by here one afternoon and watched in amazement as an entire orca family slowly swam directly beneath our boat (engine off). One of the big males was bigger than our boat, but they minded their manners and didn’t touch us.

Thanks for reading this week.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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.

Commissioned paintings, Murals

Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center

We were out in the rainy Hoh Rainforest, commissioned to take installation photos by the project designer in Washington D.C. Nancy took some very tasty images and I thought I’d share them here. This project ended last summer, but no good photos existed of it, and project artists, designers and builders need these for examples to show for future adventures. This old guy just happened by for one of the shots. That’s a see-through painting of Mount Olympus on the right, a complex collection of forest floor paintings on the tabletop – and beyond is the real thing.

Look out the windows past the art and this is the view. Big Sitka spruce is what this beautiful place is all about. I feel fortunate to have my art here, an installation that will be enjoyed long after I’m gone from walking these trails.

Thanks for reading this week. 

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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. Art, words and life from a former generation.