Tag Archives: Lewis and Clark National Park

National Park Service, New Painting Post, People Paintings, Waysides

Lewis and Clark National Park – Installation

This is a long post, lots of photos, but I wanted to document this. In 2019, I was commissioned to do a series of paintings for the Dismal Nitch unit of Lewis and Clark National Park at the mouth of the Columbia River. Astoria is just across the river, the huge Megler Bridge is just to the west.  We were recently there and I took some photos of the installation, along with a big bronze sculpture that’s there as well.

This is the spot where the Corps of Discovery, fighting a stormy southerly with huge waves and rain, hunkered down for days. Aptly named, Dismal Nitch, it really is just that, a little nitch in the cliffs. Giant logs were banging together, they were almost out of food, soaked and cold. Their quest, the Pacific Ocean was almost in view, but here they were fighting for their lives.

This is an important place in America’s history, just before Lewis and Clark connected our country together, east and west, in early November of 1805.

Just prior to me in 2008, artists Gareth Curtiss and Bill Clearman installed this 6′ x 4′ bronze at the site, and I fell gratified to have my stuff in the same location. It’s a stunning bit of lost wax casting. My part of this was the design and illustrations of the wayside. Giving credit also to Rosene Creative from Georgia handled the top end of it, Faye Goolrick of Atlanta did the text and Eric Kittelberger from Cleveland did the final maps. It’s how these projects go, a nationwide effort.

To make this project even sweeter to me, in 1963, my mom published a book about Lewis and Clark and The Corp or Discovery for Dodd Mead in New York, 1962. It’s the story of the Corps and all the wildlife and botany they discovered – almost daily – on their three-year journey. And here I was, a half-century later, painting the same story.

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

Larry Eifert

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Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings.

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Waysides, Wildlife

Dismal Nitch – Chinook Salmon Story

I like this Chinook salmon painting but it’s going to change, so I thought I’d post it here so at least there’s a memory of it. What’s wrong with it, you ask, well, the National Park Service says it’s not fat enough! Welcome to MY life, and I guess I’d agree. They have some compelling reasons – so, back to the easel.


Here’s the entire fish. The final painting will go on one of seven waysides stands at the Dismal Nitch area beside the Columbia Estuary, part of Lewis and Clark National Historic Park. This is where ‘The Corps’, in 1804, spent a week hunkered down, starving, wet and miserable before a group of Chinook Indians paddled by and sold them some salmon. It’s a good story, and one I knew from my childhood when Virginia wrote a book about the wildlife and flora this bunch found and named, not to mention the Lewis River, Clark’s Fork and others. Now, here I am 50 years later painting exhibit art for the same place! The apples didn’t fall far from her tree, did they?

This painting of spawning salmon is one of over a dozen I’ve painted in the past couple of years, most for salmon restoration areas around the Salish Sea where I live. I’ve gotten much better at understanding these amazing fish and what they look like, how they live and suffer in their final days in fresh water. They feed us, they feed the riverside forest trees and all the creatures that live next to salmon streams. They’re not a gift to be taken lightly.

Thanks for reading this week – and the entire year for that matter.
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 here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Painting Post, Waysides

Dismal Nitch on the Columbia River – new wayside paintings

Click to enlarge in your browser.

Not exactly nature art, but still meaningful to me. Lewis and Clark National Park is at the mouth of the  Columbia River. Part of the park sticks out into the river and was the location (maybe) where the Corp of Discovery stayed for a week, wet, hungry and in a dangerous situation. My task here is to show the event in six paintings that will be placed along this walkway. Somewhat serendipitously, we were here a year ago goofing around and a couple of weeks later this bid to fill up these empty panels appears. I was the only one involved that had actually been to the site.

The most meaningful thing, at least to me is that for part of the research, I used my mom’s book “George Shannon, Young Explorer with Lewis and Clark”, Virginia S. Eifert, Dodd Mead, New York, 1963. What a kick, painting the exact same thing she wrote about 55  years ago, and using her research for my paintings. Keeping it in the family!

Panel bases are already in and waiting. Below is an amazing bronze, probably worth more than our house, that sits right at the end of the loop trail.

Nancy beside the big Corps of Discovery bronze with Dismal Nitch cove in the background.
A section of the bronze, a lost wax casting of the highest quality. I know, I’ve helped do this stuff.

My paintings will be scattered along the shore and tell the story of salmon, Indians, Lewis and Clark and Jefferson’s vision of westward expansion. Of course, I’m sprinkling nature into all of them.

I like to compare Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery with the moon landings of the 60’s. It was the same, really, for these guys to head off into nowhere, without maps, and find a way across the continent in a government-sponsored expedition.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And 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 here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.