Three’s A Crowd

Original Acrylic on Board
Image: 9″ x 21″
Framed 13″ x 25″
$2400
SOLD

Giclee Print on Mounted Canvas
Edition of 300 S/N
Image: 9″ x 21″
$200

When I used to hunt ducks (I don’t anymore. See “Hat Trick” for an explanation), I liked to hunt over hand carved decoys, either ones that I carved myself, or those made by decoy maker friends. The three Bufflehead decoys in this painting were made by my friend “Hurricane” Pete Peterson, of Cape Charles, Virginia. Pete makes, without question, the finest WORKING decoys available today. Pete has gotten kind of persnickety these days and “available” means getting on a waiting list. Most people who are lucky enough now to acquire one of Pete’s classics would never think about putting it in the water, and frankly they are way too expensive to throw into the bottom of a boat, get covered with mud and ice, get SHOT at (hopefully by accident) and occasionally retrieved by my partner’s Lab or chewed by mine. (old “Spooker”. R.I.P.).

I used them anyway. Pete swears that if you hold one in your hand, a Bufflehead will land on your head. I don’t know if I would go that far, but I have actually seen live ducks courting these live counterfeits.

“Courting” is the tongue-in-cheek theme of this painting: And as usual in “the eternal triangle,” three IS a crowd. These decoys (I have five of Pete’s Buffleheads) have such wonderful personalities and they are among my favorite subject matter, and definitely more fun to paint than some of my other subjects. I have painted them in all sorts of settings and from all sorts of angles. This is my most recent.