Tag Archives: Olympic

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

Royal Lake – Olympic National Park – oil on canvas

Royal Lake is an oil on canvas painting, now available. The canvas is 18″ x 24″, with the silver frame as you see it making it approximately 23″ x 29″. It’s now available. I’m offering it with the frame.

Where is this place?

Royal Basin is in the upper Dungeness River Valley, and Royal Lake is exactly 25 air miles from where I write this in my studio – but it will take you a long day to get there. The lake is surrounded by some of the highest peaks in the Olympic Mountains, seven of them and maybe more. I’ve been there to enjoy it many times. What makes this different is that just above the lake the valley broadens out into a plateau where three glaciers once lived. With little cirque lakes, colorful heather meadows and meandering trails – all of it is above treeline. Sit on the rocks above a tarn there and one can hear the Mt Deception glacier towering above you, as it breaks off chunks of ice and rocks, cascading it all into the valley floor below. It’s a place of great beauty. But below, two meadows down, Royal Lake is another, softer world.

This painting is $1300 with the silver frame you see here. It’s not a cheapy, but a quality gallery frame. Shipping is extra but boxing is included. Outside framed measurements are about 23″ x 29″. It was painted with oil on canvas and varnished. If you’re interested, or want it without the frame for a lower price, or just want to communicate, write me at larryeifert@gmail.com

Above is the back of the frame showing the canvas – and a small part of my messy studio. As someone once said “a clean studio is the sign of a unclean mind!” And possibly the reverse might be true as well.

Below: here I am, solo hiking in those same meadows.

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

And Instagram is here.

Click here to go to our main website and see my other original paintings currently for sale:

https://larryeifert.com/wordpress/current-originals-for-sale/

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings.

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

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

Dipper Flying Home – a new painting

American Dipper Flying Home is an original oil painting – not even varnished yet. It tells the story of a little flying dipper flying into a big waterfall, high in the Olympic Mountains of Washington.

This is an 18″ x 24″ oil on canvas, and it is now available. The frame in the photo comes with it but we have other choices – I just really like how the frame colors fit with this painting. Outside measurements are about 24″ x 30″. We can ship this at cost, double-boxed and ready to hang. Email me at larryeifert@gmail.com if you’re interested in more information. The framed price is $1300.

For those who don’t know about these interesting little birds – dippers, here’s a short essay about them. Also known as Water Ousels (East Coast), they make their living completely dependent on cold, clear mountain streams. They lives are entirely connected to these streams and they don’t migrate – even in winter. They even nest behind waterfalls in mossy wet pockets they build.

Dippers were John Muir’s favorite bird, and maybe mine, too. (their name is because they tend to bob up and down as they stand on rocks) The young birds are wet from birth from the constant cold spray of snowmelt water. The parents teach them the routine by diving in, then ‘walking’ underwater, kicking over stones searching for insects and larva. They use their wings outstretched to hold them down in the current. Dippers never leave their streams, and if a tight river bend means a brief flying detour over land, they, instead, fly the long way around the curve to stay connected to their water-home. It’s the very definition of wilderness I’ve always been drawn to and love to paint.

Below is my photo of Royal Falls, one of the sources of the Dungeness River and a major reference for this painting. Royal Falls is high in Olympic National Park, but only about 25 air-miles from where I write this in my studio. The Dungeness is one of the steepest watersheds in the country, dropping over 7000 feet in just 28 miles.

A dipping American Dipper at Tunnel Creek, Olympic National Forest.

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, Nature Art, New Painting Post, Wildlife

Northern Spotted Owl original oil painting

This painting is sold!

Northern Spotted Owl: This is an 18″ x 24″ oil on canvas that is now available. The frame comes with it but we have other choices – I just really like the frame colors with this painting. Outside measurements are about 24″ x 30″. We can ship this at cost, double-boxed and ready to hang. Email me at larryeifert@gmail.com if you’re interested in more information. The framed price is $1300.

And here’s just the painting. Through the years, I’ve painted other images of spotted owls, several for Redwood National Park, but those were more ‘interpretive’. This is aimed at showing the dense, vibrant and truly amazing amount of organic ‘life’ in these Pacific Northwest forests. The spotted owl evolved for just this type of landscape with short wings for maneuvering through branches.

Above is a ‘progress’ photo I took in the studio, showing the evolution of this painting. It stayed fairly true to my ideas all the way through. And below are two reference photos. These were taken by Olympic National Park research crews high in the canopy at the Quainault forest. I used these for the big 500 sq ft mural installed at the Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center and they are the best photos I’ve ever seen of this unseen canopy world, hundreds of feet above hikers on the ground below. It reminds me of an organic messy grocery store.

Other paintings currently available can be found here on this page of my website. I’d be happy to answer any questions about any of them. No gallery is involved.

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 and see my other original paintings currently for sale:

https://larryeifert.com/wordpress/current-originals-for-sale/

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings.

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

Hiking, Nature Art, New Painting Post

Little Oils – Late Afternoon, Grassy Trail

There’s a brief time during a hiking day (imagined) when the sun is almost down, the atmosphere seems overly warm and sort of glowing. I envision going down a trail and seeing a big meadow ahead. Anticipation of something that might be really meaningful.

This is an 11″ x 14″ oil on stretched canvas. The gold frame as you see it makes the outside measurements about 14″ x 17″. It’s currently available from me for $275, frame included – Yup, no gallery upcharges. Shipping would be a bit more, depending on your distance from me. If you’re interested, please email me: larryeifert@gmail.com. Please see the little essay at the bottom.

I love that experience of the good experience about to happen and have tried to get that feeling here – and in almost all my ‘trail’ paintings in the past. These mostly come to me in winter, when I can’t go actually get here, can’t enjoy it as I would in the warmer days of summer.

When I paint these landscapes, especially ‘trail’ stories, I get lost in making them – it’s like I actually really am hiking along in a real place.

Below is a corner of our studio I’ve been using for these current batch of oil paintings. French easel, glass palette, maul stick – and a great view of the forest beyond. See that little ledge below the gold frame, the one with the Atworth logo on it? About every third brush stroke whacks that right end of it on the way back down to the palette for more paint. It gets more paint than the canvas.

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 and see my other original paintings currently for sale:

https://larryeifert.com/wordpress/current-originals-for-sale/

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings.

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

National Park Service, New Painting Post

Bounced Light – Sol Doc River

For those not from the Olympic Peninsula, the Sol Duc is one of the most beautiful rivers here, and I’ve painted it many times. In fact, if you drive the 17-mile park road from the gate to Sol Duc Falls Trailhead, you’ll pass 24 Eifert paintings along the way on turnout signs, exhibits and information kiosks. Like an art gallery in the old-growth.

This little painting is actually of the North Fork of the Sol Duc, a fantastic hike that goes up and over a ridge before dropping to a thigh-deep ice water crossing requiring boots and pants off. On the other side, it just doesn’t get any nicer, with plunge pools carved into bedrock and a meandering trail that plows up the canyon to the river’s source. Of course, in the dead of winter, this painting is just a nice memory of it, and that’s why I painted it.

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $149 framed as  you see it. Outside edge of the frame is about 12″ x 15″.
This custom frame has a triple liner and glass. Shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

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 beautiful photographs

And Click here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

Hiking, National Park Service, New Painting Post, Wildlife

North Fork Sol Duc River – a new painting

This painting is 16″ x 20″ acrylic on canvas, and is available. Email me if you’re interested at larryeifert@gmail.com.  It’s available with the nice Taos school inspired frame and I already have a shipping crate ready to go. Shipping would be extra but we usually ship UPS so it won’t be much.

This painting was inspired by a day hike up the North Fork of the Sol Duc River in nearby Olympic National Park. Not many hikers get here, as it requires a breathe-taking thigh-deep river crossing, but it’s worth every icy step. Once on the east side of the river, the trail goes for miles along the banks, from pool to pool and finally turns into a vague rambling through streamside brush. In places there are sandstone-scoured potholes, meadows beneath huge big-leaf maple groves, just a glorious Olympic ramble. This place has produced several paintings from me, all similar, all emotional light studies of this pristine river’s journey from alpine down into the main stem of the Sol Duc.

Where does this trail start and end? On Olympic National Park’s Sol Duc River Road there’s a parking area just a quarter mile upstream from Salmon Cascades. The trail heads upslope on the east side of the road, the drops to the North Fork in half a mile past the ford. It’s about eight miles upslope to an old CCC shelter, then a few more miles to Mount Appleton and Blue Lake. While the main Sol Duc trail system is mobbed in summer, almost no one makes it this pristine place, just a raven’s flight of a couple of minutes.

This painting is 16″ x 20″ acrylic on canvas, and is available. Email me if you’re interested at larryeifert@gmail.com.  It’s also available with the nice Taos school inspired frame (like you see here) and I already have a shipping crate ready to go. The offering price framed as you see it here is $950 – shipping cost is extra but it will go double boxed UPS.

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.

New Painting Post

Little Chickadee – Giant Trees

{this painting is sold – thanks, Michael}

A new painting, a portrait of one of the ‘cloud’ of chickadees that gather regularly here each day – right outside my studio. Each bird is slightly different in personality – each slightly different in ‘flitterings’ and all are a joy to watch. In these Northwestern forests, where the trees are giants and organic matter constantly rains down, these little birds have evolved to fit their world perfectly. Nuthatches, creepers, chickadees of three varieties, they all ‘hang’ together for safety. When you’re a tiny bird, there’s safety in solidarity.

The branch this chickadee is on sports lungwort, a lichen that grows into lettuce-like sheets of ‘air plants’. Some fall to the ground each winter during storms. They don’t have roots or solid attachments of any major sort, but exist by taking nutrients and water from the air. Some loberia can be a square foot in size. Once on the ground, they leach nutrients into the soil, then used by the very trees they once grew on. You won’t see these plants in a younger forest as it takes many years for them to grow – so if you see lung wort and chickadees together, you’re in an old-soul place.

Too much science? How about a nice painting?

If you’d like this original painting, an acrylic on board, it’s outside dimensions are about 12″ x 15″ and has this pecan frame. It has a custom triple mat and is under glass. We’re offering it for $195 including the frame and shipping is free within the US (usually Priory Mail). We take all sorts of payment types, just email at larry@larryeifert.com if you’re interested.

If I stand still and watch these birds, and get close, I’m struck by the noise they make when flying. “Whirrrrrrl” or try rattling your tongue, it gets pretty close to how it sounds for them. It’s relatively loud, all that air rushing about. Think what the bird hears, with ears within an inch of all that feather-flapping. It must be deafening and I wonder if that’s why they only fly short distances, to land and be able to hear again – to check if life is still safe.

Thanks for reading this week – and the entire year for that matter.
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.

New Painting Post, Wildlife

Olympic Chipmunk – Grand Ridge Trail

This new painting is now available, or not – Nancy bought it when she saw me writing this!

It’s an Olympic chipmunk, endemic only to the Olympic Mountains of Washington State, meaning it’s only here in the Olympics. It’s a very small chipmunk species that seems to have a very pointy nose. We see them often on subalpine trails (and it’s not the other chippy down in the lowlands that’s much bigger). I was lucky enough to grab a shot of this one for reference and, since all these trails are still snowed up, this is a dalliance into late summer hiking that’s soon to happen around here. Here’s Nancy spotting the little guy on that big rock, Grand Basin in the background.

Grand Trail, the highest maintained trail in Olympic National Park, is mostly above treeline (where the chipmunks are NOT), but it also drops into the subalpine fir with occasional whitebark pine where these little guys live their lives as they have for generations. Pikas do not live in the Olympics, so I assume Olympic chipmunks replace them in this habitat.

When I walk here, I like to sense how many feet have traveled along this ridgetop before me, all the way back to the Paleo-hunters who would sit here waiting for a mammoth to wander by below them. In those days, the entire Strait was filled with ice, but this high trail was open to observant travelers – just like us.

Sorry, so far the painting isn’t for sale.

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.

New Painting Post, Wildlife

Pacific Wren – Forest Gatekeeper

We were going down the trail the other day. Are you with me? And this little wren was carrying on an endless mouthy song right in front of us.  We walked right up to it. Not a moment of hesitation with this four-inch brown ball of chatter, its body about the size of my thumb. Right in front of me, it confronted my right to pass as if it owned the place!  Then I had a chance to examine the pile of stuff it was perched on – a Northwest forest for sure, with young wintergreen, ragbag lichens and some kind of leafy moss. I was struck with the complexity and beauty of that bit of complex airborne mat – probably more than I was with the little bird.

A painting like this gives me a chance to look. Not just to see something, but actually to LOOK at it. The details of one small place on our planet, the way twigs and branches combine with moss and lichens to form a dense mat of living softness. Everything here jostles for space, egged on by lots of water falling from the sky. I just like to notice the details, such as how the sky color reflects off leaves, deep earth colors compete with each other, grays and greens combining from sky and foliage.

I put this in a custom mat and hemlock frame. It’s 12″ x 12″ outside measurements. If you’d like this painting, please email me at larry@larryeifert.com.  No gallery commission, so this one is $175 framed as you see it with a bit of postage added on.

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.

Murals, New Painting Post, Wildlife

Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center Installation Complete

A two-year project finally gets across the finish line for Olympic National Park. Not the easiest thing to capture, but Nancy did a pretty good job of it photographing the final installation. A four-sided room with old-growth canopy, four other paintings on a tabletop with intricate details like swimming salmon, an otter, a fantasy image of Mount Olympus. There are hidden critters, pileated woodpeckers, spotted owls, snails, slugs, snakes, salamanders and more. There were times I truly wondered how this was all coming together, but it did – and I think it works pretty well.

Below, here’s a progress shot of some of the wall paintings (the original art) laid out in the old Superintendent’s house at Olympic NP.

And below: this part was too big to see all in one piece in the studio, so we tacked it up outside the barn occasionally to see how it was working. Nancy painted lots of the trees.

Installation with the guys from Virginia, Rob from Color-ad and Mike who did the 3-d stuff. I think we felt like family by the time with was finished.

Highly interactive tabletop was a pain to figure out, Often we all just made it up.

This is now installed and open for viewing at the Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center on the west side of Olympic National Park. The first new exhibits since construction of the building in 1968, I was first here in about 1978 for a backpack up the valley. That entry into the Hoh had a profound effect on me and it’s probably a big reason I have now spent my last two decades in Port Townsend – on the othe side of the peninsula. It’s a rare and spiritual place for both Nancy and I –  and now I feel we’re a part of it.

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.