Tag Archives: Easel Paintings

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

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

Tern Lake – Kenai Peninsula

While on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula recently I did some preliminary stuff for a few paintings when I returned home to the studio. Here’s the second one, inspired when the late afternoon light was streaming through a mountain notch and lighting up this marshy lake. The golden atmosphere made the air really glow. These mountains were so high and steep I just couldn’t get their tops in the painting, but the blue atmosphere up there gives you a hint of what’s high above. We saw mountain goats in the upper meadows up there, tundra swans and green-winged teals on the lake. It was a soft environment just holding its breath for winter to begin.

What always strikes me about Alaska every time  I’m here is the pure enormity of it all. I live next to Olympic National Park, and it’s a big park – but if you took the time to walk across it, you’d eventually come out and find towns, streets and stores on the other side. It’s like an island of wilderness in the midst of civilization. But Alaska isn’t like that at all. If you walked into THAT wilderness, you simply wouldn’t ever come out the other side. Civilization is a small island within nature. One trail we were on there had a wildlife sightings list at the trail head. It said:eight bears, one moose and calf. So, as we started down the trail Nancy noted that we were 9th on the food chain. It made for a much more heightened and self-aware hike.

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 11″ x 14″ and $140 unframed. Now click on the framed image and it should enlarge. Notice this version doesn’t have the trees on the left. I added those today, so the painting below no longer exists exactly like this. Notice the difference? No, you don’t get it without the trees!

This mahogany frame with a custom linen liner makes it a total of $165 (and we have other frames) 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. SOLD, SORRY

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

Alpine Painting for the Schulman Grove

(both these images should enlarge if you click them)

This week I finished the first of three paintings for the new Schulman Grove Visitor Center near Bishop California. Below are the sketches, pinyon forest on the left, bristlecone forest in the middle and the alpine goes on the right. Together they take up an entire wall of the new building and both doors are lined up to showcase the paintings when you walk in the place, a beautiful new off-grid summer visitor center located in the Schulman Grove at about 10,000′ elevation. The alpine painting shows 14,252′ White Mountain in the background, only about 250 feet shy of Mt Rainier and Mt Whitney. The painting’s location is placed several thousand feet lower in a land of belly-plants, marmots and bighorn sheep, but still a landscape of stark light. It was not easy to pull this off, as there are very few resources telling me what grows at this high, dry and inhospitable place. With this one behind me, I look forward to the other two coming next along with a series of ink and watercolor images for the other exhibits.

As you all know by now, I tend to paint trees. I’m very pleased the Forest Service chose me for this project as Great Basin bristlecone pines are the oldest trees on our planet. I also love these high mountain tree forests, especially this famous grove. To walk among these ancient and gnarled artistic sculptures we call trees is to walk with nature far beyond what I can understand. There’s a stark quiet here that sustains my thoughts of these living wonders far beyond the initial visit. One of them here at Schulman has been cored to 4750 years of age, a thousand years older than any other known tree species. Other downed bits of wood, branches and trunks long dead, have extended these dates back over twice that far and have actually helped rewrite climate history knowledge. But those are just numbers. How do you truly understand any of this when I will be lucky to live less than 1/50th of that?  And here I am at this brief moment of my life trying to create something that will educate some of us about all this. Daunting.

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

Red-legged Kittiwakes

I’ve never painted this bird species, and in Seward Alaska recently there were lots of them at the SeaLife Center, so, I just had to take a stab at a painting. We heard someone trying to describe the white on kittiwakes as “the whitest white.” I’d go farther. To me it is so white as to be a void, as if touching one would put your hand into a cosmic hole so deep and profound is that lack of color. They’re a very localized species, nesting on offshore islands of Alaska and spending winters in the Bering Sea, and their populations are down by about a third in recent decades as are most pelagic birds and sea animals around there. Black-legged kittiwakes were there as well, and we saw them on rocks just like this out out in Resurrection Sound with the Stellers sealions near the caving glaciers.

It’s always thrilling for me to see a creature as soft and vulnerable as this making a home in such a forbidding and harsh place. I tried to show that in the colors. Glacier-sculptured rock, windblown and water-blasted cliffs are this creature’s life, never mind the winters of driving snow, ice and hurricane-force winds. And we complain about so many unimportant  and casual things. What do they complain about?

 This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 11″ x 14″ and $160 unframed.
A mahogany frame with linen liner makes it a total of $180 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, but prints will be available soon.
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.