This week I finished up two pieces of art for outdoor installations destined for the Chena Flats Greenbelt Project in Fairbanks, Alaska. Lots of mining – lots of messed up watersheds have left this area in need of lots of repair. These paintings are about what I seem to do a lot of these days: show how a landscape MIGHT look if we give it a chance. There are many agencies and non-profits involved in this, but it really seems to be just a small group of involved citizens doing their best to improve their backyard. I’ve been working with a very impressive and diligent woman there who was willing to pare down text and make this look good – and I think together we developed it into a pretty nice piece of interpretation.
And here’s the original, first-draft sketch. Critters came, left, changed – but in the final it’s pretty much like the first idea. That’s how art should be, I think, because the first flash of thought is usually the best. Thanks, Sally.
The same folks at US Fish and Wildlife Service who commissioned me for the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge murals earlier this year have now used a small piece of them on the poster for National Wildlife Refuge Week. That’s a thrill for me on several levels, not the least of which is that this goes all around the country – and I’m already getting some fun fan mail about it.
For me, wildlife refuges are iconic places. I’ve had a very long history with these soggy mudholes, with proof shown in the photo below. It was taken just a few miles north of the same Necedah Refuge in Wisconsin, August 1956, and I was 10. The boat’s name is Redskin and it was just that, a red carvel-planked wooden boat I was turned loose with for weeks to explore the local back marshes and lakes. There was never a life jacket in sight! I used to row out to a lily-pad backwater and just hang my head over the stern watching the fresh water sponges inhale, exhale. Watch the fish make lazy circles under the snags and floating logs, watch the turtles make plopping sounds as they tried to get away from my not-so-quick little hands. These places had a powerful effect on me, a hold that remains firmly in control as I continue to paint them today, over a half-century later.
My dad was never one to shirk from duty, and if I (in the bow) and Virginia (in the stern) wanted to go out and find wildlife, he’d do it – no matter if it was hours and hours of rowing uphill. He once bragged that he planned to carry me up 12,183′ hiker’s only Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park each time we’d go there (which was often), so that by the time I reached high school he’d be stronger than Jack Lalanne. I think the idea lasted two years.
Thanks for reading this week. And thanks for the kind words about the poster.
Larry Eifert
Last week, someone asked:“what happened to that last big mural you did in, where was it? Necedah Wisconsin?” And, as life often gets by me, I had to say “beats me, haven’t even seen a photo of the installation.” So, with an email and a little poking around on Flickr – here it is, or at least a part of it. You can only see about half of the 130 feet as it goes around the bend and off into the sunset. If you remember, these were the two paintings that were scanned and printed at 300% from the original, then hung like wall paper. I’d say it looks pretty good – at least in the photo.
Some people are shocked when they find out that I not only didn’t go to Necedah for research (too much snow – couldn’t have seen what I needed anyway), but that I didn’t go there to install it (someone else’s job). I’m not sure I liked that, but that’s the way these things go sometimes. No going for research was difficult and I certainly could have used a few hours on the ground with my camera. It’s the details I just can’t get from a few on-line photos, like how the ground looks, how plants grow out of it, how much downed branches and logs, how varied the plants are between sunny and shady areas – endless stuff you normally don’t notice. Sure, a species list helps, but how many, where do they live and which ones did I need to use? In the end, I just made it up from years of doing this stuff, and everyone seems to like it.
When I was growing up as a backroom brat in the Illinois State Museum where both my parents worked, Robert Larson was museum staff habitat diarama background painter (now there’s a business card title). He was a pretty famous dude – but to me he was just the tall guy that threw paint around. I’d go down there and watch him do his stuff and he painted amazingly artistic, huge yet realistic backgrounds for exhibits that looked so real you’d swear the wolf moved each time you saw the exhibit (turned out they had an extra wolf mount they switched out occasionally). Watching this guy paint was my only training for painting these big canvases, and here it is a half-century later and I’m still at it – so, he must have had the magic that so influences kids they are determined to spend the next 50 years trying to do the same thing.
The huge, really really huge difference is that Bob Larson could take a year to do the painting you see here – and I did it in 35 days!!
A second shell on the same beach as the post a couple of weeks ago. Okay, I’m hooked on the interesting patterns in the mud and had to do another one – especially with these huge tides we’ve been seeing.
All was gray, green and brown, gray and brown – with the exception of the tiny reddish membranes on the cockle. That subtle red even reflected in the water below the shell. These recent big tides forced us take an afternoon and hike out Dungeness Spit, just to the west of us. Extending 5.5 miles out into the Straits, it’s the longest spit in the country and if there’s a more glorious beach hike, I’m not sure I know where it is. After you get out there a couple of miles, it’s a very wild shore with a big straight-on shore break and that day it was approaching six feet – certainly not the same soft shoreline where this cockle lived it’s long quiet life of possibly 25 years.
This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on stretched canvas, 8″ x 10″ and $100 unframed. A nice hardwood frame makes it a total of $130 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.
Another view: And below is another version of the same painting I thought might be interesting to post. As I paint, sometimes I hit a big question mark. So, I scan it to have a fresh look on the computer screen. Things look completely different on a back-lit screen. It’s like seeing it for the first time, and I can go back into the studio and make some changes. The top painting is the finished effort, while this one was about half way along. Notice the differences?
Thanks for reading this week. We now have a mobile phone app set up so if you read this from your smartphone, and it should look better. Tell us what you think. Larry Eifert
Just one last post with the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge murals because I think I’ve messed with this as much I can possible can. A month ago there was a beautiful clean and white wall. Perfect! Or at least that’s what I always think at that stage – and then I started painting the darned thing. March vanished, along with the white wall. On the last post I said the reception would be March 6th (tonight 5-7 at Union Bank), and I think everyone knew I was mentally-strained because no one called me on it.
Someone once asked me how I knew when a painting is finished. “When I’ve spent the money!” But that’s not really a decent answer, because the money-thing has never been that much of an issue with me. The real answer might be: It’s finished when I can’t stand to look at it anymore – and after 35 days, I’m at that point, so it’s time for a divorce. As Dan Hicks sang: “how can I miss you if you don’t go away.” Sometimes it takes me years before I can stomach to look at something like this again, but sometimes when I see it again (well, sometimes), I actually like it. Sometimes I look at it later and I wonder who painted it. Sometimes I look at it and wish I could try again. Who knows that this one will be.
Whichever this is, it’s finished so let’s move on. At 130 feet, it’s one of the most complex big walls I’ve painted in awhile and it was a bunch of fun. Thanks, Nancy, for holding the fort, the business, the house, the meals and all the rest together for the month. Oh, and she did a bunch of painting too. I gauged it at 40 days. I finished 5 days less than that, mainly because of her.
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. There’s a good essay there on her anniversary of being a runner for 36 years!!
If I have to pick up another paint brush – I’ll just throw up. That’s about the way it is right now. The fingers on this right hand of mine is loose, I’ll say that. And as for how well it’s still functioning, wine probably has something to do with it.
So here’s the second mural completed and ready for shipment. This one is about 12 feet long and 40% of the final size. After digitally enlargement, it’ll be about 29 feet long. What’s that black rectangle you ask? That’s where an underwater diorama exhibit goes. And how long did this one take? Eight days of painting, lots of help from Nancy who’s getting pretty darned good at mud.
And if you haven’t been following this stuff for awhile, this is for the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in central Wisconsin. You can see the rest of the progress at the blog listed below. Nancy’s also been blogging about this too and her link is below.
Thanks, everyone, for all the good comments of these recent posts. Hope it’s Okay if I don’t answer every one of them. As you can see, we’re sort of busy right now.
While the first painting is at Malone Design in Georgia being scanned and printed at 300%, we’ve now begun the second mural for the refuge in Wisconsin. This one is all wetlands and there’s lots of water and sky, making it qo fairly quickly – at least quicker then the other with all those leaves and miles of grass. I’ve had to do some research on how cattails and bulrushes grow, the details of their rooting systems. Can’t do that in person around here, because it’s spring and there’s LOTS of water in all the local marshes covering them all up, but that’s what field guides are for.
This one won’t be blown up quite as large as the first one, but it’ll still be a whopper of an enlargement at 250% from the painting. It’s an interesting process, but I think I much prefer painting these big wall at final 100% size, even if it takes some ladder work. That way I know what I’m getting when I paint it – there isn’t any vagueness or question about how it’ll look in final form (and I might sleep better at night).
Thanks for reading this week. These both should enlarge if you click them.
Larry Eifert
Far left side still isn’t finished, but we’re getting close. From right edge to the big tree is about 40 feet on the final 3x enlargement. I’m now beginning an entirely new painting equally as long while this section flies to Georgia today for scanning. After that it’ll return for me to finish the left side for that final 24 feet. We were fading a few days ago, but good friend Jan dropped by twice for some professional arm-twisting and muscle rubbing. I felt like a new man!
After a bunch of round-and-round about sizes, measurements and materials, I’ve now begun two larger paintings for the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin. Stay tuned for progress reports. These two shots are Days 2-4 on the first painting.
Here’s the deal. It’s a new visitor center at the refuge in central Wisconsin. There are 130 feet of walls that need to show, in an artisitic way, five habitats all woven together, from prairie wetlands to sedge meadows, uplands prairie to oak savanna and finally pine forest. Tallest wall is about 12 feet. Normally, I’d do these on theater canvas and they’d be glued up, but we’re trying something technologically new (at least for me). We’re painting these at 30% of final size on Yupo plastic paper, an ultra smooth surface that’s good for high detail. When finished, they’ll be digitally scanned and blown up 300%. So far, the printed samples look pretty good, and it allows me to paint in a much smaller room, and much quicker – and if the visitor center burns down (which has happened), they can put up a fresh copy.
Thanks so much to Port Townsend’s Union Bank for giving me studio space in a community room. They’ve done this before on large projects and have really helped my painting process. While these two paintings are 30% of final size, I still need much bigger walls than I have here in my studio. Nancy’s down there painting away with me, and she’s helping to speed the process up. So far it’s been fun. The story of Necedah and how it relates to my past is an interesting one, but we’ll save that for another post.
Stay tuned for more soon. Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert
No kidding – a two-minute walk. When we moved here a decade ago, the sellers didn’t even mention it. On our first walk down the hill, we were stunned to find this place! It’s a salmon stream (thanks in part to the locals that placed hatch boxes here years ago to renew the fish), and we now get something like 1000 chum salmon each year, and they spawn right around this first bend. Coho are here too, moving upstream to nest in other areas. We can come down here on incoming tides and see family groups coming upstream to perform their last living acts to create the next generation. Dark shapes in merky water, carrying the eggs of tomorrow’s fish.
This is a tidal area, connected to the bay and salt water a half-mile downstream, and so these mud flats appear, then disappear, every six hours as the water leaves and then returns. Herons cruise the shorelines and belted kingfishers fight for their bit of watery turf – yak, yak, yak, yak. Otters are here, along with bobcats, bear and cougar, racoons and eagles. It’s a busy place. And yet, up on the high banks on both sides, people live in houses, chickens and lawnmowers can be heard in backyards, kids go to school and dogs bark – all completely unconnected to this vibrant community right below them. It’s almost as if there are two parallel universes here, with few interactions between them. It’s only when a bear competes with a berry picker, or the cougar forgets and walks down the street in plain view of picture windows are there any interactions between wild and unwild. “DO something about the bear in my berry patch” the woman wrote in Letters to the Editor.” “Like what”, I wondered, “make his share his berries?”
Low Tide is an ORIGINAL painting is another watercolor and ink on Arches paper, 10″ x 14″ and $239 unframed. A dark mahogany double-matted frame makes it a total of $279 and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone or if you take the frame. I can email you a photo of it framed, but we didn’t want to junk up this post with it. 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 posted 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.
with more art in America's national parks than any other artist
