All posts by Wilderness Walker

New Painting Post

Autumn – Still Hanging On

 

Merry Christmas – but where’s winter? Here in the Northwest, as well as along most of the West Coast, we’ve had the driest December on record. Winter just doesn’t seem like it wants to get started. Days have been warm and sunny, nights clear and cool. Sure, it’s not summer when during June you can read a book outdoors until almost 10pm when there are 16 hours of daylight on the Olympic Peninsula – but this is just fine.

I find it just awful for painting landscapes during summer around here. Dramatic light is simply non-existent – sunset lasts about a minute and a half, tops. Sunny, then, wham, it’s dark. But Fall and Winter, now we’re talking. These days it seems like the sun goes on setting for hours and we only get 8 1/2 hours of sunlight each day. I’m not complaining, because finally I have something dramatic and interesting to paint – and it doesn’t take much of a scene to make a light-filled image just bursting with color. Luminous!

Sorry, this painting is not for sale, but we do have custom 8-color prints available either matted or framed in a variety of sizes.
Email us for details and we’ll fill you in.

Thanks for reading this week, and Enjoy Christmas or whatever you’re celabrating – and get outside for a walk.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

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

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

New Painting Post

A Winter Solstice Greeting for 2012

Just a solstice card from those two traveling artists in Port Townsend, Washington. This wishes everyone a wonderful winter solstice – and toss in a Christmas toast too. We both want to thank everyone who helped support our creative lifestyle this year and allowed us to learn about some new and amazing places. 

For us near Seattle, Winter Solstice is Wednesday, December 21, 2011 at 9:30 PM, the exact moment the earth’s northward tilting stands still – just for a moment. Then we begin a reverse back towards sunnier times for the Northern Hemisphere. I like to call it our First Moment of Spring!

So let’s celebrate that. Get outside for a bit, walk into your local park, backyard, forest or beside a beach, lake or stream. Take a great breath of air into your lungs and give some thanks that you can still do this – and still appreciate it. Life is short – but I always think it should be wide – as wide as possible!

We’ve had lots of requests for photos of US, not just paintings or photographs – so this one was taken in San Diego three weeks ago by Steven Cherry. The effects of a few glasses of wine at Casa de Pico seem somewhat apparent, don’t they?

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

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

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

New Painting Post

Ancient Bristlecone Pines mural

(There’s a lot to see here, so these images should enlarge if you click them)
The third and center painting for the Schulman Bristlecone Pine Grove east of Bishop, California was finished this week. Put together, this wall is going to be about 17 running feet of pure high-country paintings. This final one is 5 x 8 feet on stretched canvas and I was really pushing it to fit into my little studio. Several times I almost gave up and went downtown to a larger space, but I wondered how I’d get it in the car. In the end we muddled through and now it’s great to see all three together. Since there was really no room for me to line them up to check (inside, at least), this is the first time I’ve seen them all together. I think it’s going to work.

Bristlecone forests are a beautiful but stark and colorless landscape because the trees are all bleached out by thousands of years of sun, the rocks are white dolomite – and flowers are few here at 10,000 feet. And since some of these trees are almost 5,000 years old, the oldest on the planet, they really look gnarled and sculptural, so that’s what I ended up concentrating on. Paintings of sculpture!

For those who want to know more about this project, I’ve blogged about it before here:
Here is the post for the pinyon painting on the left.
Here is the post for the alpine painting on the right.
And here are the original sketches. You’re notice some serious changes between the concepts and final paintings. That’s the fun of it – not to mention I just love this place.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

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

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

New Painting Post

Brown Creeper

We’ve been in San Diego enjoying family and friends – but it’s so good to be home in our little green and peaceful meadow again with the critters. It was heartwarming to see the red squirrel heading up to his tree-home with a giant wad of our home fiberglass insulation in his mouth!! and this little creeper was on the same tree trunk.

Possibly one of my most favorite birds,we have several resident brown creepers here in our little patch of forest. They’re like little scurrying mice, but instead of being on the ground, we see them on tree trunks. With over-sized toes for probing and poking, their coloration makes them resemble tree bark so much that if they stop moving, they almost disappear. While equally-small nuthatches spend their lives climbing DOWN trees in search of insects, creepers do just the opposite. They circle and climb UP trunks, pocking and pecking away to find the bugs nuthatches missed. In this way, both species can co-exist on the same tree, and while one is watching the ground for trouble, the other watches the sky.

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 8″ x 10″ and $320 unframed.
We have custom frames that would make it a total of $145 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.
Email us for details.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

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

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

New Painting Post

Blue Lake

 

 A pretty normal name for a very pretty lake. So pretty we visited it several times this summer, and each time I thought it would make a nice painting. Blue Lake is just barely on the west side of the North Cascade Crest here in Washington, almost exactly 100 miles east of our studio here in Port Townsend. When we first asked about the place, we were told “You have to get up there. This is the sort of alpine lake you want to sit down with your lunch and just enjoy for awhile.” And so it was! We found all sorts of mountain goat hair stuck on branches and pikas yelling “peek” to announce we were there. Pristine High Country always gets me! 

I was looking at the current snow levels for this same area just yesterday, and saw that some North Cascade passes now have 75 inches already on the ground. Seems pretty early for that sort of thing, doesn’t it?

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 8″ x 10″ and $120 unframed.
A custom wood frame makes it a total of $145 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.
Email us for details.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

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

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

New Painting Post

Afternoon River Light

This painting became something very different from the scene that inspired it. Just for fun I’ll insert the photo reference so you can see the changes from nice little creek to blatant river sunset. A lot of painters never show their references, as if it’s some secret where the inspiration comes from, but I find it fascinating how the mind takes over from reality and off it goes to some new created world. You can see there are somewhat similar color values, somewhat similar rocks, a similar bend – but where did the change of scale come from? I got all wound up in the texture of the rocks, how the light would possibly be bounced off the sky, cool and hot at the same time. It’s what makes painting just great fun, and the more I do it, the more I want to bend reality into what I want it to be, instead of what it was. Call me a romantic influenced by the likes of Bierstadt and Moran, that’s okay. After 40-some years of doing this stuff, I hope I get a free pass.

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 16″ x 20″ and $350 unframed. A custom wood frame makes it a total of $375 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. .
Email us for details.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

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

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

New Painting Post

A Show at Gallery Nine in Port Townsend


For the month of November, Gallery Nine, 1012 Water Street in Port  Townsend features the paintings of Larry Eifert and Chuck (CW) Stern’s wood turning in a show about the Craftsmanship of Art.
Both Nancy and I are represented by this peninsula gallery, and I so rarely do any shows I thought I’d post the event here. For this, I’m partnering with Chuck Stern, a wood turner and carver whose work I consider to be of the highest quality. It’s a nice mix because I tend to paint wood in the form of forests and trees – Chuck uses wood to create his art.

(Here is a part of the press release) Chuck Stern turns both functional bowls and vases as well as carving unique burl wood into beautiful, sometimes whimsical sculptures. His love and close knowledge of wood comes from a lifetime on the Olympic Peninsula working in many facets of the wood industry, and it’s clear that Stern knows wood in a way that is not simple or superficial. “It’s taken decades to understand that once-living wood has a history buried within it. Each year, each growth ring, each winter storm or injury creates an internal change I need to recognize, understand and try to incorporate into my finished piece. It’s not just slamming it on the lathe and turning out a bowl, but more a conversation with an ancient once-living soul.” 

 Join the artists for conversations about their work during November’s Gallery Walk, 5:30 to 8 pm, Saturday, November 5.

For my part of the show I’ve worked up 20 new paintings (these, besides the three big murals I’m currently involved with that aren’t finished yet means I’ve been busy). If you’re interested in the painting shown here, as of this posting it’s still available. “Heather Meadows ” is 11″ x 14″ on canvas. It’s available for $140 without a frame. A nice custom wood frame makes it $165 and shipping adds a bit more depending on your zone. If you’re interested, email me and I’ll put a hold on it.

Thanks for reading this week, and if you’re here on Saturday, please stop by Gallery Nine. Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to. And here’s the link to Gallery Nine’s website.

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

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

New Painting Post

Cutthroat Creek Meadows

This painting and about 20 others are destined for a November show I’m having at Gallery Nine in Port Townsend. If sold here on the blog, I hope I can still hang it there for a week or so. While only about 5% of my mailing list is from Port Townsend, I’ll be hanging the show on Monday if you’d like a pre-show preview before Saturday Gallery Walk.

Cutthroat Lake is on the east side of the North Cascades, but just barely. Where the snowmelt runs out of the lake, it braids itself through some very pretty mosquito-filled meadows, then comes together to plunge down into Early Winters Creek towards the Methow Valley in eastern Washington. We were there a few months ago and I was interested in the way the light was streaming through the trees and onto the creek. It made for a very interesting and complex set of light patterns around the jumble of islands, downed trees and moving water. From this location, we turned around and walked a few hundred feet, and this was the spectacular scene that awaited us. (Clicking on both these images will enlarge them.)

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 11″ x 14″ and $140 unframed.
The custom wood frame makes it a total of $165 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.

Email us here for details or just hit reply.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

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

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

New Painting Post

Schulman Grove Pinyon Pine Forest

(If you click it, this will enlarge in your browser)

This is the second of the three Schulman Grove bristlecone paintings for the new visitor center east of Bishop, California. A few weeks ago I painted the first one of the alpine area that will go on the far right side. Now this one goes on the left side and shows pinyon – juniper forest. Overall size of these three is about 17′ x 5′. If you look at the upper right of the painting, you can see the bristlecones growing up at 10,000′, where the middle painting is sited. That’s the High Sierra in the distance.

Pinyon pine nuts have provided food for people, birds and animals for as long as they’ve been growing. Because of this, the Forest Service requested a gathering party of Native Americans be added to the mural so they can interpret that on the reader rail below. That seemed awkward to me, because it places it as historic and out of context with the other two. What to do? So, I set an amber value scale to the painting to make it feel like an old sepia-tinted photo. I’m hoping it will still go well with the other two paintings, but there’s a very different feel to it.

A busy time these days as I have a show coming up at local Gallery 9 in Port Townsend. I’m enjoying the back and forth between huge mural canvases and looser easel paintings. There’s a lot of paint being tossed around.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

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

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

New Painting Post

National Wildlife Refuge Week poster

(These photos should both enlarge with a click) 

The same folks at US Fish and Wildlife Service who commissioned me for the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge murals earlier this year have now used a small piece of them on the poster for National Wildlife Refuge Week. That’s a thrill for me on several levels, not the least of which is that this goes all around the country – and I’m already getting some fun fan mail about it.

For me, wildlife refuges are iconic places. I’ve had a very long history with these soggy mudholes, with proof shown in the photo below. It was taken just a few miles north of the same Necedah Refuge in Wisconsin, August 1956, and I was 10. The boat’s name is Redskin and it was just that, a red carvel-planked wooden boat I was turned loose with for weeks to explore the local back marshes and lakes. There was never a life jacket in sight! I used to row out to a lily-pad backwater and just hang my head over the stern watching the fresh water sponges inhale, exhale. Watch the fish make lazy circles under the snags and floating logs, watch the turtles make plopping sounds as they tried to get away from my not-so-quick little hands. These places had a powerful effect on me, a hold that remains firmly in control as I continue to paint them today, over a half-century later.

My dad was never one to shirk from duty, and if I (in the bow) and Virginia (in the stern) wanted to go out and find wildlife, he’d do it – no matter if it was hours and hours of rowing uphill. He once bragged that he planned to carry me up 12,183′ hiker’s only Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park each time we’d go there (which was often), so that by the time I reached high school he’d be stronger than Jack Lalanne. I think the idea lasted two years.

Thanks for reading this week. And thanks for the kind words about the poster.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

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

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.