This is one of Virginia Eifert’s ‘famous’ hand-painted Christmas cards. Inside is hand-written calligraphy:
Now let the echoes
of the songs of May
Refresh and warm your hearts
on Christmas Day – 1963

I was 17 then and just beginning to sell my stuff at art fairs and local shows. Not very well, I’ll admit, but it was a passionate start.

She sent these cards each year for decades, ending with her death in 1966. I’ve heard from people who still have many of them, some even framed, for she painted hundreds. I did too, until my real work simply swallowed this up. Unlike me, Virginia was legendary for being able to do it all (except maybe clean the house or teach her son to do the same), which brings me around to what I really want to say here.

Merry Christmas and loving thanks to everyone reading this. We’re sending a genuine thank-you to the fantastic group of friends, clients and buyers who have supported Nancy and me as artists all these years. It’s now been over four decades of making a living as a working artist, beginning way back in the 1960’s with a gentle but firm push from Virginia.

Thanks to all of you who have faithfully bought my work, but also thanks to all the people who sell our stuff in park stores coast to coast, in galleries and countless other places. It’s a very wide web these days, and unfortunately I’ll never personally meet many of you.

And thanks, also, to someone I DO know, thanks to my very most important and special person, Nancy Cherry Eifert, who not only has a photo career of her own, but also handles the licencing, royalties, commissions and shipping, including orders from that pesky website that never seems to work properly. She’s an amazing partner that can multi-task with the best of them. They say that, these days especially, it takes at least two people working more than full-time to be one professional artist. We’ll both tell you that’s certainly true.

I know this won’t last forever -I wish it would, but I won’t stop or even slow down exploring nature through my art and words. Like Carl Rungius, the Canadian painter of wildlife I admire greatly, I want to drop dead at my easel a few long decades from now – and we hope you’ll continue to come along for the ride until then.

Thanks again for reading this week, and have a Happy Christmas.
Larry Eifert

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