Our web host has been messing with our shopping cart this last week. You’d think a company the size of France could figure this out, but not these days. And, I admit it, painted this image last year, but I just had to put a blog entry about it now because the Olympic Peninsula recently got a bit more crowded.
Fishers had been extinct on the Olympic Peninsula for decades, having been trapped out of the entire state of Washington for their plush fir. Last year, Olympic National Park commissioned this painting to coincide with the release of the first groups of fishers seen around here in 80 years, animals the Park resource people brought down from Vancouver Island. The painting was used for a bunch of interpretation, educating everyone about the event. It was fun to attempt to paint something I knew little about. This house cat-sized critter is between 2 and 4 feet in length including a giant tail. All four feet have five toes with retractable claws, and because they can rotate their hind paws 180 degrees, they can grasp limbs and climb down trees head first. So, unlike similar martens or weasels, this allows them to hunt birds in trees.
Disregard the arrow! It was a proofing issue.
So, it’s one thing to reintroduce animals into the wild, but it’s another to keep them there. It appears to be happening. The park set up an automatic camera in the backcountry near a female fisher’s den in the Elwha Valley. It showed the mother taking four babies, known as kits, out of the den, which is located fairly high up in a rotting snag. The animal appears to be moving her young to a new den, presumably closer to the ground so the kits won’t have far to fall as they grow.
I really hope that in a few years there might be fishers all over the Olympic Peninsula, maybe even passing through my backyard (but that’s a stretch).
Currently you’ll have to email if you want something, but we now have museum-quality prints available of the fisher painting available here of three sizes for between $39.95 matted and $239.95 fully framed.
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.
I’m attempting a new and “improved” emailer and I’m a bit worried to hit the send button. If it’s botched, don’t give up on me.
Several have asked if I’m still painting wildlife as stand-alone images. Of course! I’m still hooked on doing these single-focus themes – sort of a wildlife moment.
Here’s a new effort along those lines. This little winter wren and its stump are soon to be on an interpretive panel for Olympic National Park. We have these little birds right here in the meadow below my studio, so studying the real deal was pretty easy. So was the stump. I used a broken and leaning mossy log down by the compost pile as the model.
Winter wrens are about the size of my big toe. They have amazing courage (or stupidity) and come boldly out of the ferns to confront you trespassing in their territory. They’ll let go a stream of sizzling, bubbling chatter that goes on for ten seconds or so, possibly a rapid series of threats in wren-lingo. Recently, I had one fly from a nearby fern frond and land on the brim of my cap. As it landed I could hear the flutter of its little wings, like the sound of a deck of cards being shuffled. To them, that must sound very loud, like an airplane propeller.
Sorry, but this painting already belongs to the National Park Service who commissioned me for it.
Link here to many other wildlife prints 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.
Thanks for reading, now I’m going to start painting. Larry
Tolowa Dunes Stewards funded this painting for interpretive and educational efforts. Tolowa Dunes State Park is a 5,000-acre California State Park located on California’s far North Coast near Crescent City. Lake Earl and Lake Tolowa are there, as well as a significant portion of the relatively large coastal plain around it. As one local scientist said: “The Lake Earl sand dunes and wetlands represent one of the richest hotspots for bio-diversity of both plants and animals found along the West Coast of the United States.”
I’ve spent many years living just south of this area and know it well – so this was a fun project. Just to the north on the Smith River, I painted my very first large-scale interpretive mural back in the 1980’s for Redwood National Park. That original is still at the Crescent City Visitor Center, and the exhibit still at Hiouchi Visitor Center up on the river. It’ll probably outlive me!
So here’s the sketch.
It was a speedy one, even for me. Because of a funding deadline, the painting was finished in less than a week – but then you guys probably knew that. It’s painted with acrylic on paper board and is about 40″ wide.
Click here to see lots of other national and state park interpetive art on our website.
Some of you have asked where the full website is with all the puzzles, posters and park exhibit stuff. Just click here.
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We’ve been away for two weeks, so no posts for awhile. We were in Hilo Hawaii, better known as Hi-Town, enjoying sea turtles, Coqui frogs, volcanoes and the most interesting blend of people, music and art we’ve seen in awhile. The Big Island has turned into quite some place.
Meanwhile, the summer visitors are a’comin, and this year’s Olympic National Park’s Bugler cover is a painting I recently finished of the Sol Duc Valley for Olympic National Park, northwest of Seattle on the Olympic Peninsula. It was commissioned for a roadside wayside exhibit, but these paintings often end up doing double duty. Now, I’m pleased to say that, for the second year in a row, the park has used my work on the cover of the park’s summer newspaper (that’s the giveaway publication you often get at most national park’s gate or visitor centers). I heard that the initial spring printing was about 100,000 copies.
Of course there’s a back story:
Here’s one of the many Sol Duc River reference photos I took to get the painting going.
And here’s the draft sketch for this painting. You can see the exhibit text blocks that will eventually overlay the painting, which never makes it easy for the painter. I have to not only create a good painting that might be used for, say, the Bugler cover, but also allow areas for text when it’s used for a roadside exhibit. After decades of doing this, I guess it’s just all in a day’s work – but I continue to be very interested in the serious challenge of making it all work up into a good artistic work of art and not just a photo-like exhibit. Some work better than others.
If you’re interested in more of the interpretive art I’ve completed, click here to see lots of other national and state park art on our website.
If you know someone else that might enjoy these occasional emails, you can always 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
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.
This commissioned painting is for Olympic National Park for use as the summer 2008 park newspaper cover (100,000 copies) and interpretive exhibits. The last Olympic fisher was trapped about 50 yrs ago, leaving an empty ecological niche. ONP is releasing 100 of these animals in a re-population plan. About the size of a large housecat, fishers hunt small birds and rodents.
I painted this scene at about the place the first group were released, the Elwha River Valley. The models for the trilliums were from our own backyard, and so is the cone midden the junco is messing about in. The junco could have been here too, if it had stood still long enough.
Because of the interest in this project, we decided to offer high-quality giclee prints of the fisher painting. Here’s the fisher link and easy buying info.
Elk Prairie, Prairie Creek Redwoods State and National Park, is south of Crescent City California – north of Eureka. I have a lot of work there, two large commissions in the visitor center museum, many roadside panels, lots of printed products in the non-profit store (posters, puzzles, books – you name it).
So, when the State of California asked if I was interested in doing another one for an interpretive exhibit, I jumped at the chance. I have this legacy-thing going there and want it to continue. Big opening night for the mural installation is mid-June, 2008.
Commissioned by the Crater Lake Institute, this is the second mural I’ve painted of Crater Lake. I think I now have that “blue” figured out. Puzzles, cards and posters coming in summer of 2008 so stay tuned.
with more art in America's national parks than any other artist
