Category Archives: Waysides

Commissioned paintings, Interpretive Art, Nature Art, Uncategorized, Waysides

Hellyer Park wayside panels redo

Yesterday I sent this and it wasn’t pleasant to view on computers. So, I apologize, but here it goes again. You know, old guys, new software. I don’t need to say more, except thanks for sticking with me.

I just finished these last week so wanted to share. A click will enlarge them nicely.

This project was for a native plant garden in Santa Clara County California. It’s a place surrounded by my art in other parks, Mt Diablo, up to Muir Woods, Big Basin Redwoods to Fort Funston and Angel Island, Golden Gate National Recreation Area are some. This park is urban, running along Coyote Creek through San Jose, with a sea of people living along the south shore of San Francisco Bay which includes nearby Silicon Valley and Stanford. Shown here are big background landscape paintings that I was given a fairly free hand it painting – like a gallery show right here in this little park.

Spanish First! So that’s the redundancy of the two sketchbooks in every panel. Took me a bit to accept it, but I’m okay with it now.

These are the very first wayside panels I’ve ever painted with Spanish as the primary language, which says lots about who uses this urban park. I’ve made many of park panels with Spanish as a second language, but never Spanish as the first language – which shows how far this country has changed in the past few decades. I’m proud to be involved in change.

The other interesting direction taken here is that the text isn’t necessarily connected to the art. It’s common to have background art connected to the rest of it, but this is refreshingly ‘wide’ vision of presenting these are more art than school. The sketchbooks are my pencil and watercolor paintings, with canvas acrylics as the backgrounds. All are 42″ wide.

There are elk in this panel, and the title ‘Restore’ suits it. Yes, they’ve introduced Tule elk back into the landscape above the East Bay, and so you can see them here at Hellyer Park up on the ridgetop fairly often.

This last panel is also different, using the entire panel as a thank you to the community’s efforts to repair a landscape much in need of the natural plants that are the foundation of a healthy city.

I want to thank Carolyn at Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation for these, for giving me a free hand at design and art. As I move forward with my art, replacing the almost extinct National Park Service with a path forward in continuing to do what I love – which is to make art that teaches people about their surroundings. It’s clear I didn’t really loose my job as our National Parks closes up shop, and I don’t mean any temporary government shutdown, but these great parks will soon become something else I’m not going to be a part of.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

Larry Eifert

Here is my Etsy site with my currently available paintings for easy sale.

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

And Instagram is here.

Click here to go to our main website.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings.

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

Or Crater Lake Institute’s website which I also build – viewership of several million a month!

Commissioned paintings, Interpretive Art, Murals, Nature Art, New Painting Post, Uncategorized, Waysides, Wildlife

Garry Oak Forest

I recently made two panels for the Whidbey Island Land Trust and Oak Harbor Garry Oak Society. Here’s the oak panel. This and a panel about nearshore restoration will be installed at the new Keystone Preserve on Whidbey Island very soon. I’m pleased how this all finished up, from concept designs, to making the art and finally making it all work with a text story. Art telling stories, we’ve been talking about that lately.

Garry oaks are the only oak trees in the Pacific Northwest, and they’ve become very rare. This is the same tree as the Oregon white oak, stately and slow-growing forests that were actually cultivated crops for thousands of years by the Indian tribes. These trees provided food and an open forest designed for other important plants such as camas and the other root vegetables for the first people who lived here.

Garry oak forest

Above is my refined sketch for the painting. I was trying to find a way to show the forest and some way to identify the important native plants that are rare as well. And this bluebird, below, gives a scale to the oak leaves and bird that could fit in the palm of my hand. Watercolor and pencil drawing.

garry oak and western bluebird

And below, the second panel for this project, about the restoration of the bluff at the Reserve, eelgrass beds, orcas, salmon and forage fish.

People have been asking, are you still painting for the National Park Service as it spirals down to non-existence? Yes, I currently have two projects and two more awaiting for them – but it’s a sad story that shows my work with them is going to end soon – thanks to the Fascist leadership who is setting up the NPS for total failure. It’s been a wonderful experience for me to spend these past decades painting art for a grateful bunch of people who cared more about their country than making money.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

Larry Eifert

Here is my Etsy site with my currently available paintings for easy sale.

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

And Instagram is here.

Click here to go to our main website.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings.

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

Or Crater Lake Institute’s website which I also build – viewership of several million a month!

Commissioned paintings, Interpretive Art, Nature Art, New Painting Post, Uncategorized, Waysides, Wildlife

Dungeness River Center – Sequim WA

In 2024, I was commissioned by the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe in Sequim, Wa to make a series of wayside panels for the Dungeness River Center. This is an interpretive center, exhibits and classrooms, for the wild and free Dungeness, one of the steepest watersheds in the country. The project went on half a year, but I never posted a word about it here. Too many other paintings to talk about, I guess – not to mention finding the time to even sit down to post them.

The Tribe asked me to make these outside panels so when the visitor center is closed, visitors still have a visual learning experience. The panels are around the building, but also along the Olympic Discovery Trail that passes nearby. This trail is also part of the Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail from Glacier National Park to La Push WA on the Pacific Ocean.

I’m happy with the results. This place is centered around an old railroad bridge (Railroad Bridge Park) and the Tribe bought it, gaining back a bit of their original land they had for thousands of years. In the process, we got to know a rather amazing group of S’Klallam people – and learned a lot doing it. We both felt privileged to be involved.

You’ll see both English and S’Klallam languages on these. The Tribe has programs in the local schools teaching this ancient language, and we tried to blend the languages, especially on the species captions. I think it worked pretty well, although it was a real challenge to figure out a font that has all the characters. Try finding a ADA compliant font with a backwards question mark, or a word that means Belted Kingfisher!

There’s a lot more than just painting that goes into this stuff. I don’t do it all, but from the ground up there’s the concrete pad, an ADA-approved installation of the legs and frame that will last 30 years, the aluminum panel the image is etched on is made only in South Dakota. The entire Adobe Suite of software (usually 4 programs that I use to design it) makes it print-ready. Then a committee has to approve what is written and painted so that it’s an accurate story. The art seems a secondary bit of this, but it takes the most time, and without good art, what is this but a book-on-a-stick!

We tried something new on this panel (above), making the three insets from laser-cut plastic that can be traced with pencil or crayon. School groups can trace the image onto paper to take with them – sort of a hands-on approach to a visual object.

Dusty Humphries, an artisan at the Tribal carving shed (actually a huge new building, not a shed) allowed me in to photograph his work. A truely amazing place.

Lori Grinnell Greninger seemed to be all over this project, giving us help in many ways – and not just modeling her hat – which the building was modeled after.

This last panel has the only image not of my own art or photography. Thanks to John Gussman for the drone image. Also a great thanks to Kathy Steichen for recommending me to the Tribe for this project in the first place. After a lifetime of painting, these new challenges keep me young, and I’ve worked with Kathy on many projects now.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

Larry Eifert

Here is my Etsy site with my currently available paintings for easy sale.

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

And Instagram is here.

Click here to go to our main website.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings.

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

Or Crater Lake Institute’s website which I also build – viewership of several million a month!

Backpacking, Hiking, Interpretive Art, National Park Service, Nature Art, New Painting Post, Waysides, Wildlife

Green Rock – oil on canvas

Green Rock is an oil on canvas painting, now available. The canvas is 30″ x 40″ on stretched canvas. It is big enough I thought I’d sell it without the frame, so someone could buy it unstretched, rolled in a tube with the stretcher bars ready to go. We can talk about it.

Below is the painting in a frame, just so you can see what it looks like. I don’t have this frame at the moment, but go ahead and ask.

Where is this place?

The painting is, of course, about salmon (not the green rock). But in these big canvases I find great enjoyment in hiding stuff and telling stories – so how many salmon can YOU find?

I’ve seen many salmon along the Sol Duc River, mostly in Olympic National Park. I even have outdoor exhibit panels there telling the Sol Duc Coho salmon’s story. It’s a special place for both Nancy and me, a place many paintings have been hatched (to use a salmon word). In fact, counting up how many paintings Olympic National Park owns of mine of the Sol Duc Valley: 17! (including one with Nancy in it) Most of them are in a vault at the main visitor center in Port Angeles, so even I can’t see them. All were used for exhibits and reproduced.

If you’d like to find out more about this painting, or if it’s still available, write me at larryeifert@gmail.com.

This is a link to our new Esty store online with some of the available originals.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/EifertGallery

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

Larry Eifert

Here is my Etsy site with my currently available paintings for easy sale.

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

And Instagram is here.

Click here to go to our main website.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings.

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

Or Crater Lake Institute’s website which I also build – viewership of several million a month!

Interpretive Art, Nature Art, New Painting Post, Waysides, Wildlife

MacKay Landing – Lopez Island

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.

Larry Eifert

Here is my Etsy site with my currently available paintings for easy sale.

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

And Instagram is here.

Click here to go to our main website.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings.

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

Or Crater Lake Institute’s website which I also build – viewership of several million a month!

Interpretive Art, New Painting Post, Washington State Parks, Waysides, Wildlife

Hoypus Landing Wayside Panels

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.

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.

National Park Service, New Painting Post, Waysides, Wildlife

Jackson Dam Grand Teton National Park

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.

Larry Eifert

Here is my Etsy site with my currently available paintings for easy sale.

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

And Instagram is here.

Click here to go to our main website.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings.

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

Or Crater Lake Institute’s website which I also build – viewership of several million a month!

Commissioned paintings, New Painting Post, US Fish Wildlife Service, Waysides, Wildlife

Similk Bay Beach Restoration Art

I’ve painted many pieces of art for the Northwest Straits Foundation. They’re the shoreline restoration folks in Bellingham, WA that coordinates the restoration funding with actually getting the job done. And, they often come to me for the final, interpretive panel that explains what they did.

This time it was for Similk Bay along the eastern side of Whidbey Island, just northeast of Deception Pass in Washington State. It’s a very shallow bay, full of critically important eelgrass, but at low tides you could actually drive on it – it was that shallow. And people did drive on it! For years they used a small launch ramp right here, running over the eelgrass with its crabs, young salmon, forage fish, all manner of fragile aquatic life. Then: why are the crabs gone? Where are the fish?

There were people disgruntled to loose their launch pad, but sometimes progress backward is good. Below was my five-minute concept sketch. I put it in the design program to see how it fit with some text. Pretty well, I thought.

Below is my refined sketch. You can see how it’s basically it’s the same drawing, but all the details are now worked out. It still changed a lot before the final color version. All of this, including the final painting, took less than a month.

And here it is in the design program. It fits pretty well. I wrote the text, as I often do, but it was altered many times as all good writing is a collaboration before it’s final publication.

And below is the site where this printed panel will live. Cars drove right down here past the driftwood to launch their boats. The final panel below.


Here’s a sample of the beach, part of my process is to take lots of reference photos. I needed this in the studio later to figure out how the beach and bay bottom might look.

And my house model. The old launch ramp is right next to the house. I really enjoy these projects because it allows me to place art where you’d never expect to find it – ON A BEACH SAVING AN ECOSYSTEM! My paintings end up on people’s walls, but they also end up in place like this.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com. 

And thanks, Lisa, at Northwest Straits Foundation for continuing to support this guy, one man with a brush.

Larry Eifert

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

And Instagram is here.

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, National Park Service, New Painting Post, Waysides, Wildlife

I’m free: 540 days of Everglades paintings

I started this project June 29th, 2021. That’s 542 days start to finish. It took that long to complete 24 paintings for Everglades National Park, but the painting part only took a fraction of that! Meetings, waiting, more meetings. So, here’s the last one, 108″ x 48″ that will be installed along along the Anhinga Trail Boardwalk in the Royal Palms area. It’ll  have text tastefully spread across it, two languages both English and Spanish. All these photos should enlarge in your browser.

  • No, these paintings are not the only stuff I’ve painted in 542 days.
  • Yes, I also painted dozens of other images for state parks, national parks, a bunch of salmon recovery groups.
  • Yes, these will all be reproduced in aluminum with steel frames around them.
  • Yes, it’s not only me doing this, as I’m part of a team from EDX in Seattle and they are doing many more wayside panels than just mine.
  • One trip there was with EDX. A second trip was just Nancy and I this last spring to pick up more material I needed.

There is already another painting here, one that’s 30 years old, so my new painting will be replacing it. What’s the difference, besides age? Times change. Today, the alien snakes, pythons and Anacondas people have released into the Everglades have killed off many of the species that were in that old painting! Pretty much gone are the raccoons and otters, the ecosystem is changing. So, I’m just upgrading this to the current and future world.


And here’s the scene from the boardwalk. I think I got it fairly well.

And sitting on the railing throughout my first recon photo session, this immature cormorant just sat there as he got his clothes straightened out. I could walk right up to him.

And of course, this guy was hanging out under the pilings.  The Anhinga Trail is truly one of the best places in Everglades National Park to see wildlife, almost guaranteed.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

Larry Eifert

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

And Instagram is here.

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, Early Paintings, National Park Service, New Painting Post, Waysides, Wildlife

Everglades National Park – Plentiful Fish wayside

I’m now finishing up all 24 paintings for Everglades National Park. I went there twice in the past 2 years to get it all straight in my head, and now the final paintings are coming together. Here’s number 19, a story about fish. Putting art with words, I’ve become better at it, but it’s still much more difficult than when I just painted landscapes.

I have a little note on my website (larryeifert.com)  that asks to see old paintings if you have them.  I get some interesting submissions, and this one just arrived from John Van Spyk who said he inherited this. Dated 1989, it’s now 33 years old. I painted hundreds of these small landscapes back then, taking my painting kit out along roadsides and going to work. I could do several of these a day and sold them in the Eifert Gallery in the little town of Ferndale. Here’s another one I recently received from Judy Salter. Both of these are watercolors, and I think they’ve stood the text of time pretty well.

But now I’m into much more complicated efforts – and still enjoy it. Here’s the evolution of the fish painting: the original concept sketch, then the beginning of the colored chapter, and finally again the final. It didn’t change all that much, did it?

Location photos for the painting during a Florida rainly day. There’s Sherry, part of the design and production team.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

Larry Eifert

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

And Instagram is here.

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.