Just west of our marina and downtown Port Townsend, an old railroad grade goes along the bay before turning inland. This is now a public trail, part of the great Northwest Trail that goes from Cape Avala, west of here, all the way to Glacier National Park in Montana – three states and 1200 miles away. And while it’s a hiking trail like the John Muir, Pacific Crest or Appalachian Trails, here you have to climb on our ferry for a few miles to keep going east.
Coming into town, there’s one place under the bluffs where, late in the afternoon, black-tailed deer like to congregate. You eyes focus on the marvelous views ahead and they often miss the fact you’re being watched yourself – but Port Townsend deer are pretty tame, having been raised from birth on the garden roses, apples and all manor of tasty plants carefully bought and planted by the locals.
This is a larger painting today. This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on archival board, 14″ x 10″ and $650 unframed. If you’d just like the painting framed, that makes it a total of $690 and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone or if you take the frame. This is an ORIGINAL painting, NOT a print. Email us for details.
To check the availability of the other originals I’ve blogged about the past few weeks, check the blog here and go down the listings.
Thanks for reading this week.
Larry EifertClick here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints and other stuff.
Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently doing.
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The other day, while we were waiting for the Port Townsend – Keystone ferry on Whitbey Island, we walked over to take a few snaps of the nearby old Fort Casey batteries and this great old lighthouse. The lighthouse actually predates the surrounding fort by decades, having initially been built in 1861. It has to be one of most interesting lights on the West Coast with a sort-of Spanish look to it (although it was designed by a German). I really should have painted it looking seaward, because across the channel the Olympics, Point Wilson Light and Port Townsend create a vast and beautiful panorama, but I’ll leave that for another painting. Maybe a bigger canvas!
I’ve also been working on some larger “park” murals recently but have really enjoyed these smaller efforts on canvas. I’ll keep at it for awhile – it seems you all like them too.
This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 9″ x 12″ and $140 unframed.
The gold frame 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. Email us for details.
To check availability of the other small originals I’ve blogged about the past few weeks, check the blog here.
Clicking the image should enlarge it for better viewing. If not, go to the blog here.
This week, it’s sort of a Hudson River School painting. Or it could be the 17th-century painter, Paul Rubens, didn’t paint landscapes as much as he painted people, but the colors and mood here are the same (at least that’s the way I see it). I learned early-on that painting dark colors and textural shadows around the edges helps brings the viewer’s eyes quickly to the center focal point – and away from the painting’s edges (where they just might wander off someplace else). I like all these textural effects, slamming wet and goopy paper towels, dry brushes and even the back of my hand into the canvas. The back of my hand: that part of my body has rarely been completely clean of paint now for decades.
“Our Road” is just that, it’s our street right in front of our studio. There are only three addresses on the entire stretch plus another that’s not legal, and it deadends into a saltwater swamp where there are more salmon then people. Hilton Avenue sounds pretty ritzy, but, hah, it’s just a little dirt lane the county sometimes thinks to grade (or not).
This painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 9″ x 12″ and $140 unframed. The gold frame makes it a total of $180 and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone or if you take the frame. Email us for details. Like last time, this one isn’t going on the main website, but will be only on the blog.
We’ll be gone to the mountains until Friday evening, but I promise to contact everyone who wants this in the order we received them. Thanks for reading this week. Larry Eifert
Point Wilson Lighthouse is on the north end of Port Townsend. It’s an old fort too, Fort Worden State Park, where all manner of music and art happens, the largest poetry press outside of New York (that won a Pulitzer this year), a woodworking school and a bunch of other stuff that goes on year-round. I played a mess of blues a few years ago at the Blues Camp, but, it’s the lighthouse that continually draws me in. Maybe it’s because it’s also that living place where the waters of Puget Sound and the great Straits of Juan deFuca meet, a wild and crazy place of currents, wind and waves – and I always like being on the edge of something.
Here’s the point when I sailed by it awhile ago. What a different scene when you’re at the mercy of wind and waves! Tourist kayakers regularly get caught here on a big ebb and swept out into the Straits, causing all manner of Coast Guard rescue actions and heroic photos in the papers.
SOLD
This painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 9″ x 12″ and $150 unframed. The gold frame makes it a total of $180 and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone or if you take the frame. Email us for details. This one isn’t going on the main website .
This week, I was going to send out a painting I just finished of Sol Duc Falls, but I received so much good mail last time about the saga of Rumpy, our old boat, I decided to tell you about the boat we now have (another art project). It’s a pretty interesting tale, and the past few days I’m giving her fresh paint in the boat yard, only a few hundred yards from Rumpy.
We bought Sea Witch 10 years ago, soon after giving up Rumpy, because, well, you just can’t be Boatless Near Seattle. Built in 1939 in Tacoma, Sea Witch was designed by Ed Monk Sr, probably the most famous boat designer in this part of the country, and in fact Rumpy was designed by him too. For the boat’s first 25 years, things went along in fairly normal style until the Bailey family bought her in the 1960’s. Five kids, dog, cat and both parents Jo and John would all stuff themselves aboard this little 30′ boat and sail off for the summer. According to the kids (who are all adults now), things never went all that swimmingly, but something must have clicked because most of them still love to sail and the boat lives on in iconic family history.
Then things got serious! In the 1980’s Jo went started writing sailing stories and cruising books, and because of this, just about everyone around the Northwest knows about Sea Witch. I had even purchased a signed book with Sea Witch on the cover back then and still have that copy. Jo continues to write today and occasionally includes Sea Witch in her tales.
So a decade ago it was our turn with the old girl. She needed a complete restoration which took me several years – and was quite some job. All this is well documented with scads of photos on our website if you’re interested (click here), but what I want to really show is that this boat and its dingy (shore boat) has since become the subject of an entire portfolio of my paintings. Not only that, but I’ve also written Sea Witch stories for the Seattle Times and supplied covers and stories for Seattle’s 48 North magazine. This beautiful and graceful shape, a classic example of form and function combined, doesn’t have a bad view. This is not so with modern boats sporting reverse transoms and plastic hulls. Sea Witch not only sails well but is a joy to portray. Like the graceful curve of a beautiful woman’s back, this boat’s shape gives me great pleasure to look at. For that matter, she’s a joy to slap paint on too.
Here’s a favorite image of mine showing where she lives. If you look closely, you’ll see two river otters on the dock. While they’re cute, these little bandits come on board and leave amazing messes you can’t even imagine. I was sure if I painted this as homage, they’d leave me alone. Hah!
So here’s the pitch. If I sell a couple of prints or a painting this week, I can pay for the haulout and maybe a can of paint – and one of you could own a piece of Sea Witch. (maybe that’s too shameless a pitch.)
We have eight-color Giclee prints either unframed or framed, between $39.95 and $239.95 available of this painting and the original painting is still available for $700 unframed. Email us.
Or, you can go to our Giclee Print Index here
Here’s our main website address where lots is going on.
Or, send us an email to opt in or out of our email family – or just ‘talk’ with us. I promise I won’t be so wordy next time.
Rumpy in the glory years when these two artists owned her.
Art comes in all shapes and sizes, and over the years I’ve been involved in the making of a whole bunch of it. This week, I got to save a piece of art both Nancy and I once joyfully owned – so we’re passing the story along to all of you.
On Halloween of 1994, Nanc and I bought this boat, an iconic 1941 45-foot wooden tri-cabin power boat in Seattle and brought it over to the Olympic Peninsula. At 76,000lbs, it was a handfull! We wanted to get into Port Townsend, but the marina was full so we settled for a more remote yet very scenic small bay and community of Port Ludlow. Many of you remember those years when a marina slip number as our mailing address. As the years went by, we rebuilt and restored Rumpuckorori (or Rumpy as we called her) to a very beautiful craft – really, a functional piece of art. For us, it was home. We weathered storms at the dock when we thought the marina was going to break up, we cruised up the Inside Passage into British Columbia, and even lived in the boatyard when bottom work needed to be done. In effect, we created a liveable piece of wooden art!
When we bought the “Lodge” in Port Townsend in 2000, we couldn’t also own this huge boat, so we sold her to a retired guy who promised to keep her going. Well, we’re sorry to say he didn’t! After a few years of simply hiring out all the work, he gave up and the boat hasn’t moved in years. Paint began to peel, rot came a’creeping, fresh water got in the bilge and all manner of bad things began to happen. Old wooden boats need paint and varnish or they die pretty quickly. Friends told us to not go and look, but we did anyway and occasional visits left us shaking our heads in sorrow. I predicted that if nothing was done, Rumpy would die by 2010 or so.
Then, two months ago I received a call from the owner pleading for help. A month ago I met two very nice Canadians with some energy and skills looking for just this kind of boat. Last Sunday morning in fog and drizzle, I helped move Rumpy to dry storage in Port Townsend to begin reconstruction – and a new life.
I think there’s a longer story here. By doing this I feel like we helped continue all the energy and money, frustrations and good times of a great many people, from the past builders and former owners, to countless shipwrights that have ever worked on her during her 68 years – to us! It’s a connection I’m not willing to just let slide out of my life for good, and in a few years, I’ll let you all know how it all worked out with Rumpy’s next chapter. Shipwrights (who are true artists of wood and metal) have already come forward with offers to help.
It doesn’t seem to matter to me that I won’t own her and won’t get to motor out to a little cove for the evening, but it does matter that I know the boat is still alive, still a piece of functional art and still making someone happy. Life doesn’t get any better, does it?
Thanks for reading this week. Larry Last Sunday morning: Rumpy on the way to a new life. Thanks, Joe, who followed the boat in case it sank enroute.
If you’d like to see some of the paintings or Giclee prints of Sea Witch, our current boat we’re restored,click here.
Or, send us an email to opt in or out of our email family – or just ‘talk’ with us.
This story is in 48-North this month, the best sailing magazine in the Northwest. I thought everyone might enjoy it. I tend to write and illustrate short stories much like my mom did – must be some genetic-thing repeating itself after 50 years. Once you’ve read the story, click the link below to find out a bit more about this interesting woman. (We’re still working on the content,) Virginia’s site.
An Ancient and Respected Art Story and illustrations by Larry Eifert
Varnish Day! Sounds like something important, like Election Day, but that’s just the day I’d picked for an afternoon bout of keepin’ the ol’ boat goin’. Old wooden boats are not unlike a good partner in life; they need attention occasionally. I kept a careful log last year and it worked out that the dreaded m-word (maintenance) was in play about 12% of the total time I spent aboard Sea Witch. Not that I mind it in the least, because it’s always a pure joy to make something of quality shiny again.
So, there I was. The block sander had made its rounds; the vacuum had cleaned up the mess, followed by the tack rag. I was ready to uncork the can of varnish that, since the Bush Years, had become a little tin of liquid gold when overhead I heard that unmistakable chattering sound. “Yack, yack, yack, yack” – my lady-friend the slate-blue kingfisher. This noisy little bird had spent the winter here in the marina, dodging rigging during her flights up and down the fairways, fishing along with those flashy hooded mergansers that also spent time here fishing. I’d grown accustomed to her, a little flash of gray, white and chestnut that often landed on the upper spreaders of Sea Witch to eat her fishy meal. Yah, there was occasionally a bit of a mess on the desk, but to me this bird represented ‘the quality of life” and fish parts were a small penalty. The varnishing could wait a few minutes. Watching a kingfisher at close range was better.
I sat back and studied her. I knew this one was a female. In most bird species, the male is the most colorful – fitting clothes for the obviously less intelligent of the genders, but kingfishers are reversed. Both have complex grayish-blue and white patterns, but the female has a reddish-chestnut band across the stomach.
Belted Kingfishers are around the waters of western Washington and coastal B.C. year-round. During breeding season in spring they can get very vocal and spend their time defending local fishing territories against others of their kind. About a foot long, they have evolved a very specialized set of tools suited for their lifestyle. Their method of making a living is simple. They sit on a perch overhanging water, like a tree branch, piling or boat rigging, and when their fantastic eyesight spots a tiny three-inch fish below the water’s surface – they go for it like a rocket. A terrific plunge at lightning speed either spears the quarry or the bird manages to grab the fish in its bill. Another variation is to stop in passing flight, hover for a moment and then take the high dive. Once the fish is captured, the fisher-king finds a perch where it beats the heck out of the fish until it’s subdued, followed by rearranging it so it can be swallowed whole – gills, scales and fins pointing aft. When fish aren’t available, frogs and aquatic insects are second choice on the menu, but it’s the fish that give this skillful bird its name (afterall, they’re not the frogfisher or insectfisher).
In the 1936 book, Birds of America, George Gladden wrote: “This is one of the pronounced and picturesque personalities of the feathered world – a handsome, sturdy and self-reliant bird who makes his living by the persistent, skillful and largely harmless practice of an ancient and respected art. [Fishing!] What wonderful eyesight he must have. From a fluttering halt in his flight ten or fifteen feet above the surface of the water he makes his plunge, like a blue meteor, or not infrequently from a perch fifty feet or more from the water, striking it with an impact that, one would think, would completely knock the wind out of him. It is as graceful and daring a ‘high dive’ as is to be seen anywhere”.
The bill: an amazingly long and oversized appendage with a slight crook in the upper mandible, evolved so added pressure can be applied like a meat sheers or pliers. The overly-large head (like a doll) fits the bill but seemingly not the rest of the body. Feet: so small they look ludicrous. Evidently kingfishers can barely walk – but then they don’t really need to. Perching is what they’re all about, so they only need feet to grab the branch. After fifty years of watching kingfishers, I don’t ever remember seeing one walk, but they do walk. Kingfishers nest in holes in waterside banks, like so many eroded shoreline cliffs we have around the Northwest. They dig an upwards sloping tunnel sometimes eight feet deep into these sandy banks and then widen the far end for the nesting chamber. You can tell kingfisher nest holes by the “W” shaped entry. As they land, both feet scrape a slight trench on the bottom of the landing strip, and then they walk up the tunnel in total darkness to the nest. Inside, five to seven nestlings wait expectantly for their parent’s return – and a regurgitated meal. After three weeks, the fledglings work their way to the tunnel entrance and their first flight – sometimes from a hole 30 feet up on a cliff. Remember, in the confining tunnel there’s no fluttering around learning to fly for a kingfisher, and also remember, they’ve been in that black hole for weeks and not watching their parents avian skills. They simply jump and hopefully ancient instincts help them get it right during the first second.
How beloved are these birds? Well, Canada has paper money with former Prime Ministers, the Queen, and – a five dollar bill with a kingfisher. It’s even kingfisher-blue. And the varnishing? It appeared the day was over!
You can go to our index page of more published stories.
Link here to the same story on our website, larryeifert.com.
If you’d like to see why I write about our ol’ boat, here’s more about Sea Witch.
Or, send us an email to opt in or out of our email family – or just ‘talk’ with us. Thanks for reading. Our mailing list is increasing, so if you know of anyone else who might like this, send us their address. Larry
The Yellow Rowboat This boat, tied at the dock at the Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle’s Lake Union, is one of my favorites. What’s not to like. It’s all varnished, top to bottom, skeg to oars. The only paint is on the tips of the two oars that have been painted blue just where they’d touch water on each stroke. Very classy!
We have eight-color Giclee prints either unframed or framed, between $39.95 and $239.95 available of this painting and the original painting is available for $700 unframed. Email us.
Link here to the Yellow Rowboat print on our website
Or, you can go to our Giclee Print Index here
Or, send us an email to opt in or out of our email family – or just ‘talk’ with us.
A good friend owns this fine wooden boat. Built in Port Townsend, it has been a fixture here in town for many years. I’ve always admired all the seemingly tangled mass of bowsprit weaving – something that our boat, Sea Witch, has none of. The hooded mergansers come into the marina in winter, fishing at the stormwater outfalls for small fish attracted there by nutrients.
This is an acrylic on paper, and prints are now available.
This image is destined to be made into jigsaw puzzles, posters and probably cards for Olympic National Park. I’ve wanted to paint this scene for years. From this ridge, if you turn 180 degrees, it’s possible to see our home forest 25 miles below in the distance. This is the dry side of the Olympics, and because of its isolation, there are many plants and animals that have to evolved to grow only here – the Olympic Marmot, Olympic Chipmunk, Olympic Weasel and others.
It’s a special place for Nancy and I that few ever see. The original painting is 24″ x 36″ and is acrylic on paper board. It’s currently available for sale.
with more art in America's national parks than any other artist
