Tag Archives: Port Townsend

New Painting Post

Gallery Nine Show in Port Townsend

Eifert_Union_Wharf_Gulls

“Gulls at Union Wharf” is an acrylic painting, 14″ x 20″ on board and offered custom framed for $795. This is part of my show opening September 7th in Port Townsend at Gallery Nine. Email me if you’re interested.

Gallery Nine in Port Townsend is where both Nancy and I show. It was just voted best art gallery in our county (and that includes Mount Olympus and the Blue Glacier).  It’s not the first time. In fact, by my count, Gallery Nine has won that award four out of the last five years, and I think for good reason. It’s a happy, fun and fairly prosperous place considering it’s remote location, and the wine and goodies at the monthly gallery walk aren’t bad either.

 

This original painting has been in our collection for awhile now, but it’s time to let it go. This was our boat for over a decade, and I did some major restoration on her. It’s a somewhat historic boat with a nice pedigree, and I still miss it. The painting was actually to commemorate the new sails we just bought. Notice the new sail ties, the pure whiteness of the main (soon to change after some use and stress). They match the color of Nancy’s hair that is just barely visible through the open hatch (that got that way by use and stress).

 

I’ll be in the Wooden Boat Festival this coming weekend with our new boat, a Lightning named Thriller, and the gallery show opens on Saturday evening from 5:30 to 8pm with wood-turner Chuck (CW) Stern. Come down for both and say hi and help me sell out the show on its opening night. I’ll be on the boat most of the weekend.

 

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.

New Painting Post

Wooden Boat Paintings are Back

“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.

New Painting Post

The Artist’s View – Eifert’s 48North Page for June, 2013

Recently we were in the Seattle Aquarium and while Nancy was photographing the yearling sea otter, I spent some time in the tidal tank area with my sketchbook. This is one of my favorite Seattle-places, almost as good as the Woodland Park Zoo. I’ve spent hours in here drawing and just watching life go on in the big salt water exhibits. So, from that came this little sketch showing the community of critters that live there on one of the pilings. This is all raw ocean water that gets piped into the aquarium, and it’s all unfiltered so much of the marine life comes in naturally. As I was drawing this, I realized everything in front of me was either trying to eat everyone else, or trying to just hide so as to not be eaten. What a scary place to live – so I wrote about it for my monthly story in 48-North magazine.

And here’s my original sketch before I added watercolor to it as an underlay. Lets see: plumose anemones, kelp crabs, pile perch, acorn barnacles, ochre star, little brown barnacles and a hermit crab or two. Got it!

And just in case you missed it last week, here’s our newest puzzle, “A Walk on the Wild Side” for Fort Townsend State Park, the old-growth forest park near us here on the Olympic Peninsula. Check it out here on the website. And thanks, everyone, for the initial interest in this new interpretive puzzle. Very gratifying.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to. And you can follow me on Facebook where I just posted a new hiking album.

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.

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

New Painting Post

A NEW Jigsaw Puzzle for Summer 2013

 

 

Oh Boy! Announcing a new Eifert mural puzzle – and it’s now available on our website. If you live on the Olympic Peninsula, email us and we can arrange pickup or delivery so you can avoid shipping – and I’ll even sign the box if you want. You might remember my posts a few months ago about completing this mural for our local old-growth forest park, Fort Townsend State Park and funded by the Friends Group and the Washington Native Plant Society. Now this painting is available for some serious close study as a new 500-piece, 18″ x 24″ jigsaw puzzle. There’s a LOT going on in this image and it should be fun – and the box back makes for a very good interpretive study – even a field guide.

 

 

And here’s the box back showing the “good stuff” as one of my park-ranger-friends calls it. You really can use it as a field guide – and I admit I already have when I forgot one of these rare plants I saw on the trail the other day.

The original mural is installed in the park, and a large exhibit is at the entrance station too. I’m proud of this one, because it’s in my backyard. Rarely do I ever get to see my paintings after they leave the studio, but this is my ‘morning walking place’, and it’s fun to see it there.

Thanks for reading this week. I counted, and I believe this is my 72nd painting made into an interpretive jigsaw puzzle – wow.

Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to. And you can follow me on Facebook too. Lots of other stuff there, like trail albums and trip logs.

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.

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

New Painting Post

Sea Lions – My 48-North article for May

Geez: I turned in my monthly offering for June and realized I hadn’t posted my story for May. 

The page should enlarge for easier reading if you click on it. This story is about one of the other big carnivore-predators around the Pacific Northwest (besides us) – and how these big guys keep getting in the way. It’s the good, the bad and some ugly all rolled into 225 words. The photo below was the inspiration and reference I used for the initial illustration. This is the “Big Red Can” that’s just offshore at Port Townsend’s Point Hudson harbor entrance. I’ve seen more sea lions on this thing than I can count. I was sailing out there a couple of days ago and a very large male was ‘laying out’ on the top, just like my little watercolor shows. As I sailed past, he didn’t even wake up. I could almost hear him snoring – 1000 lbs of snoring. Check out the entire magazine online at: 48 North, I’m on page 33.

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.

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

New Painting Post

Meadow Fawns

Another of my recent “Meadow Herd”, this one was painted from a reference photo from a year ago – but both are still here. This week we’ve seen several females vanish from the backyard-bunch. I’m thinking they’ve found a quiet place to birth the next batch of fawns, and hopefully we’ll see the results soon. One was looking like a definite candidate for twins. The two in the painting are still in the meadow, grown but not willing to take on the big guys for space at the food dish. In fact, there’s a big buck with infant antlers that actively chases them away, snapping like a dog at their hind legs. Yesterday, another buck with budding antlers was eating from the dish while I held it, and that was maybe too close for my comfort zone. A big animal, and I kept remembering a story from Yosemite a few years ago where a buck actually killed someone. While they’re fun to have around, they ARE wild animals.

 

And here’s one of the twins a year later, taken just yesterday. Just growing out of its winter coat, he’s looking a tad shabby. Yes, that’s a backyard swing. It hangs on a big horizontal branch of a big-leaf maple that’s 30-feet up. Quite a swing-g-g-g-g-g.

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 11″ x 14″ and $140 unframed.
A custom wood frame makes it a total of $170 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. I can email you a photo of the frame if you’d like.
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.

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

New Painting Post

Point Wilson Commissioned Painting

(click the image and it’ll enlarge in our browser.)

Yes, I still occasionally still do commissions – if they’re fun and challenging., I’m most interesting in a life that’s stuck out there a bit, so I still look for challenges. One doesn’t have a past like mine, of climbing mountains and sailing to the Sea of Cortez and Alaska, of trying to make a living from my paintings and all the rest without realizing there should ALWAYS be challenges – and the bigger the better. We were talking with an old friend the other day: “what are you doing” “As little as possible” was her response. I mean, what the heck sort of life is THAT? If I EVER say that, just shoot me (metaphorically-speaking, since I don’t believe in guns).

So, I was approached by a very nice woman who’s a ‘lifer’ here in Port Townsend. She lives right in town in the same house she and her husband bought in the 1950’s! Many afternoons she heads for Point Wilson Lighthouse nearby for her exercise – goes down the beach in her blue sweats, around the light and up the hill. She showed me photos that her husband took many decades ago of the cypress trees on that hill, and, so, would I be interested in painting something that she could look at on days she doesn’t walk. Point Wilson, Mount Baker, Mount Shuksan, and maybe ME sailing in Sea Witch. I couldn’t resist.

Here’s my reference photo, five photos crammed together to help me figure it out. The mountains weren’t ‘out’ that day, but I had other references for that part. For the many that read my blog but aren’t Northwesterners, this spot is at the north end of Port Townsend in Fort Worden State Park. It’s where the waters of the Straits of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound converge – and has a mile-long sand beach on one side, a rocky cliff beach on the other. I’ve painted many images here. 24″ x 48″ acrylic on canvas.

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.

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

New Painting Post

Old Buck

“Old Buck” is the fourth of my “Meadow Herd” paintings. This old guy has been here the longest of all our current dozen Columbian black-tailed deer. In fact, as I write this he’s here right below the back deck. This was painted from a reference photo I took last summer when he had his  horn-hat on, since currently there are only little knobs showing where this year’s antlers will be. I took the photo when he was all excited about a female prospect (who denied him and ran off into the forest seeming either laughing or in a panic to get away, or so it seemed) and I thought he had this look of pure softness, like he was pleading with her for acceptance. I’ve practiced this pose myself, by the way, but rarely need to resort to it!

These deer, Columbian black-tailed, are a subspecies of the more common western mule deer, and are smaller by far – but you’d never know it standing next to one. When a male puts his mule-shaped Roman nose out, he becomes a fairly daunting creature. That ‘look’ doesn’t happen until they’re a couple of years old, and when it does you can really see the genetic closeness to the ‘mulies’.

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 8″ x 10″ and $120 unframed.

The custom wood frame makes it a total of $140 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.

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

New Painting Post

More Paintings of Our Black-tails

Last week I posted a painting of one of our backyard Columbian Black-tailed Deer. Remember: Apple Please? This week I’m showing two more. (Sorry, but the little fawn above was taken quickly and isn’t available.)  A year ago we had two does that birthed three fawns. There was another mom that showed up occasionally with twins too, and one afternoon they were all here at once: three moms with FIVE fawns! It was crowded, but everyone seemed to get along Okay – but what do we know. The more I watch them, the more I see the social life of these guys seems very complex.

 

This painting is of the dominant doe that’s been here for years – the mother of the fawn above.  She has this look! See the way she just pierces you with that blank stare? She’s checks out the house, circles around it to find out where we are – which room we’re in, then comes right up to one of our big windows where she gives us the ‘stink eye’ for a handout. No movement, no blinking, no acting coy or cute, she just stares until you give in. Cats do this, we know (boy, do we know), but a 160 lb deer doing it is something else again. And Nancy gives in pretty quickly: “okay, okay, meet me at the back door” and it’s as if the deer understands completely. Back door it is!

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on canvas, 9″ x 12″ and $140 unframed.

I have a nice gold frame on it for an upcoming  gallery show, which makes it a total of $160 and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone or if you want to take the frame. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

 

Thanks to everyone who have been buying my new Virginia Eifert Kindle books. Amazon doesn’t give me a list of buyers, but lots of people are rediscovering her work – including me. Three up, seventeen to go.

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.

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

New Painting Post

An Apple Please!

“Meadow Herd #2 – Second-year Buck”
8″ x 10″ acrylic on canvas. 

I’m currently working on a painting series of our “Meadow Herd” of 12 Columbian black-tailed deer – that’s right – 12! This one is of the sweet but persistent velvet-antlered buck that was birthed two years ago. He’s still here, along with a total of 11 others that seem to never stray far from the house. The other morning 9 were in the meadow at once. When we moved into the ‘Lodge’ back in the 90’s, hunting was still allowed in the ‘neighborhood’. The deer were here, too, but always moving, passing through, edgy. Early mornings, we’d sometimes hear gunshots down in the estuary and figure it was probably out-of-work ex-logger-types in a desperate situation and in need of protein for their families. Now there are no shooting zones here and in Port Townsend, and the deer are everywhere, calm, friendly, stopping traffic, creating gawking tourists who, at first, think they are mechanical yard ornaments (well, maybe they are).
Oh, and then there’s Nancy, happily feeding them apples, pears, buckets of oats mixed with molasses – right out the back door of the barn! The local feed store-guy told her that he sells dozens of 40 lb bags of the stuff each WEEK  to Port Townsend deer-feeders, and she’s one of them. What, you say? You’re FEEDING them? But she doesn’t see any difference between the chickadee feeder and a deer bowl – and I get models for paintings. (The photo below was taken a couple of days ago from the office window.)

 

It takes patience to live with wildlife on the Olympic Peninsula. We sometimes forget that this isn’t just a normal American suburban place – we forget that wildlife is more plentiful here than people. I mean, there are only 9,000 people living in Port Townsend – but there are over 5,000 elk on the peninsula.

 

We have bats in the shingles (I washed the roof and 7 flew off of just one pitch) and we hear them come and go each night. Squirrels continually prob any weak spot to get into the attic or crawlspace. I’ve counted almost 90 different species of birds and critters either on the ground or flying over the property. If you count the deer, snakes, chipmunks, weasels, bobcats, raccoon and the rest, I’m sure I see many more critters than people in my daily life – and for a life-long painter of nature, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Sure the roses get eaten, the bulbs are chewed on, the flowers chomped down to nubs, but we also have 200-lb. deer going nose-to-nose with our freaked-out cat on the inside of the window. It takes Nancy’s breath away when a full-blown bucks just stands there as she brings him a bucket of oats – as he snorts at her from 24″ away. It’s a very high Quality-of-Life thing that I can’t imagine NOT having.

And so, this ORIGINAL painting of “Meadow Herd #2 – Second-year Buck” is an acrylic on canvas, 8″ x 10″ and $125 unframed. The custom wood frame makes it a total of $145 and shipping for either adds just a bit more depending on your zone. This is the original painting, NOT a print. And I’ll bet that one of you starts a collection of these – especially if you’re from Port Townsend. I have four finished with a fifth almost there.
Email us for details – and I can send you a photo of the frame.

 

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.

Click here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. We now have three of her books available as Amazon Kindle books.