“Christie” is an acrylic painting on board, 14″ x 20″ and is offered as a pre-show sale for $795, custom framed in a choice gold frame with linen liner. Click the image and it’ll enlarge.

I’m  having a show at Gallery Nine in Port Townsend that opens September 7. For many years I’ve built, rebuilt, painted wooden boats, sailed them to Alaska, California and Mexico (well, that one was plastic made from goo) – and of course I painted pictures of them – lots of them. I think of wooden boats as sculpture created from natural materials and shaped into something that actually moves, and moves by the power nature provides – the wind. They’re a marriage of form and function, designed and created to fulfill a difficult task in an alien environment that is always trying to kill me. They’re beautiful, they carry us to distant places of extreme natural beauty, and do it almost silently. I paint wilderness because I truly believe it is important, and  I sail wooden boats as a way to be closer to wilderness!

So, we have a new boat now, a 1959 Lightning and it’s fairly well put back together so I’m putting it in the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival in September. As a little trip down memory lane for me, I dug around in our private collection and came up with some wooden boat paintings we’ve kept back, and these are going in the show. I’ll also have a bunch of less expensive Giclee prints of many of my favorites as usual, but some of the paintings haven’t been seen in years – and I think it’s a pretty sound body of work. So, this is the first blast of publicity before it opens. Join wood-wizard Chuck Stern and me at Gallery Nine September 7th if you’re local. If not, here’s the first chance at some of these paintings.

AND, then this: a couple of weeks ago an old childhood friend stopped by for a visit. He reminded me of my FIRST wooden boat, and coincidentally I happened across this photo a few days before. Here I am (at the mast because I wasn’t sure how to steer yet. At age 14, I built this little craft in my basement, well, my parent’s basement. My mom was instrumental, as usual, in my wicked ways to run me astray. We didn’t have a power tool in the house because my dad was an intellectual and classical pianist who thought it beneath him to even pound a nail. But, somehow I bought some plywood, cut it up and put this thing together from Popular Mechanic plans. Mom sewed the sail – I bought a TV antennae for the mast and spars. I had to take the cellar door off to get it out and my dad claimed I was ruining his house – but the thing actually worked. Well, almost: we had to stay near shore because it leaked like an old sock. Still, I did it, and it began a sailing journey I’m still on today, five decades later. And yes, I’ve learned how to steer, even on a black night in a soupy fog.

Thanks for reading this week. Hi ‘reply’ to comment. It’s always fun to read what everyone thinks.
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.