About Larry Eifert
Larry Eifert est le fils de l'écrivain Virginia S. Eifert descendante du républicain, professeur de mathématique, contrôleur des poids et mesures, Napoléon Ambroise Cottet.
Straight ahead with the same old thing……..
I like to think to myself as a third generation naturalist and
fifth-generation social activist. Some of that might be a stretch, but
it gives me guidance never-the-less. I sometimes imagine the billions of
choices I could have had for parents, and always feel fortunate I
happened along this specific road this time around.
I was born in 1946 and exposed to nature and a pencil before I could
walk. After nearly four thousand paintings later (to the best of my
counting ability), I still get a real charge from creating art about
nature. The year 2006 could probably be considered my 40th anniversary
of making a living as an artist.
This was NOT an accident!
Home was Springfield Illinois, where my mother (author and illustrator
of 20 books – mostly about nature) was editor of a museum nature
magazine for 36 years. Her work is still in print after 50 years – and,
like me, she thought nothing of traveling 5,000 miles on various river
workboats for book research – or hiring a fishing boat to get to those
remote refuge islands off the Gaspe Peninsula in Quebec Canada. My dad
was very influential too. As education curator for the Illinois State
Museum with a double-masters in ecology and English, shepherded
thousands of kids (and me, too) through the museum. He also instilled in
me a reverance for life. As an Army GI in WW2, he never carried a gun,
although he was shot at by snipers he could clearly see in the hills
above the camp in New Caladonia. “Shoot a gun, you’re out of the
family,”I remember hearing often. From these pretty rarified beginnings,
I gained early mentoring from both parents and museum staff – and never
really looked back. Mine is a continuing passion instilled from many
sources, from the boyhood time spent at, say, Rachel Carson’s home in
Maine, to the museum babysitters who said “Here – draw this giraffe and
don’t bug us.” To me, life was all about nature and discovering it.
After coming to the Pacific Northwest in 1972 in search of “rainy
forests and wind-swept beaches,” I opened the Eifert Gallery in Ferndale
California, and during the 1980′s and early 90′s and exhibited both my
own work and many other artists. It was here that I learned about
painting parks. Now, I can say I have more work in America’s National
Parks and refuges than any other artist.
Today, Nancy and I live in Port Townsend, Washington near Olympic National Park.
Click here for our main website at larryeifert.com
Click here for Nancy’s website at
nancycherryeifert.com
