Olympic National Park High Country by Larry Eifert

Larry Eifert and Nancy Cherry Eifert

* Larry Eifert has been painting nature professionally for 40 years. No artist has more work in America’s National Parks, refuges and preserves.

Eifert was brought up as a ‘museum brat,’ the result of both parents working for a large natural history museum. Art, nature and an enduring passion to both have always remained in the forefront of his focus, pushed there by his award-winning author and mother, Virginia Eifert. He hasn’t wavered from this goal since he began to sell paintings in high school in the 1960’s.

In the 1980’s, Eifert discovered a door that connected his nature paintings and America’s National Parks when he realized parks needed good nature art for exhibits, visitor centers and even outdoor trail waysides. He quickly discovered that the National Park Service and other government agencies preserving wild America needed people that could both provide the art, but also knew nature well. Eifert realized he already grasped the science-side of parks, and the rest was a very easy slope to go down. Now, many hundreds of pieces of Eifert’s art are installed in parks, preserves and refuges from coast to coast. From Florida’s pine forests to Alaska’s glaciers, from redwoods to prairie, Eifert has created art of much of the best nature in America, and in the process has gotten to know it like his backyard.

Nancy Cherry Eifert, partner and photographer with Larry for over 20 years works beside the painter on every project. As the support photographer, Nancy provides the needed resource of countless photos for painting reference, but she’s a professional photographer in her own right as well. Photographs are the ‘other’ medium for most interpretive exhibits, and Nancy’s work is there, too, right next to Larry’s paintings in park visitor centers. The two also show together in art galleries.