Not many people know from an early age exactly what they want to do for a living. Not so with Cameron McIntyre, who set out at the age of 20 to carve his niche as a full-time handcrafter of wooden decoys.
He wasn’t driven by hubris, believing he was destined to succeed in this rarified profession. He was motived, he says, by his love of the work but also, in no small part, his unwillingness to consider an alternative. McIntyre is drawn to decoys in part because of a lifelong passion for hunting; they are vessels of memories of days spent out in nature, crouching in the marsh, waiting for a flock of ducks to make a landing.
Still, after he set out to make a living out of his passion, “There were lean times for the first five years,” says McIntyre, who with his wife and kids lives and works on a piece of land on a peninsula of Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 180 acres of farmland and marsh. “I wasn’t making much money, but I was putting all my effort into trying to improve and get to a place where I could do this. It was sink or swim, so I just kept telling myself that I’ve got to do this. And I did.”
Today, McIntyre spends his days in a studio on his farm, a space to create in peace, with no distractions but the music he plays; the late singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot is a favorite. “What makes me tick is going out to my studio, staying there all day, and not talking to anyone,” he says. “I don’t have a phone out there, I don’t have a computer out there. I definitely don’t have a TV. I listen to music all day and work on my ducks. That’s what makes me happy.”
CARVING HIS PATH
In the early days, McIntyre spent time learning from the old masters of decoy art. He also studied painting and drawing at the University of South Carolina and the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston. And he became a sought-after restorationist for antique decoys. “For 15 years or so I did thousands of them,” he says. “I got to learn all about how the old makers
did things. I still fix the occasional decoy, but I feel like that was part of my apprenticeship, and now I’ve taken everything I’ve learned to focus on my own work.”
Free from distraction, McIntyre is attuned to the wellspring of his own creativity. He doesn’t look at pictures of ducks or other decoys. Instead, “I have a memory bank of everything I’ve been doing over all these years, and now I just draw everything from my own imagination so that it feels fully mine.”
Those who know McIntyre often marvel at his toolkit, both sparse and very, very old. “I’ve figured out over the years that you don’t need a huge arsenal,” he says. “You can make just about anything with very few tools.” The fact that some of the few are around 200 years old speaks to the quality he’s found in these antiques. “The fact that they’re old is a byproduct of they’re having been made so well. One of the tools I rely on is called a spokeshave; it was made in Sheffield, England in about 1842.” He always has his eye out for these treasures, combing through farm sales and flea markets when he gets a chance.
When he makes special finds, he allows himself to ponder the stories they carry. “I wonder all the time what somebody else made with them,” he says. “I’m hoping that my work is living up to their standards.”
LIVING TRADITIONS
McIntyre is careful to correct an easy assumption to make: that as handcarved works of art—many of which he might spend up to a month working on, taking breaks to set one on a shelf and work on another until he’s ready to take the next step—his decoys are purely decorative. Many buy his decoys not just to admire but for use out in the field, as well. “The way I see it, you can go online and buy a dozen plastic decoys for $50,” he says, “and when they wear out, you throw them away and buy another dozen. Or you can buy handmade decoys that you can use and build memories with, and then you can pass them down to your kids.”
It’s this tangible connection to tradition that draws many collectors to McIntyre’s work. Decoys themselves carry a rich sense of history; their use dates back to ancient civilization. In McIntyre’s work, they love the way he captures that history, conveyed through his deep understanding of their rich history and his own lovingly painstaking process.
“From early on, I’ve felt lucky that people seem to like my work, and I’ve developed a lot of good customers who’ve become repeat customers who’ve been buying birds from me for 35 years. These are people I consider to be not just customers but good friends.”
McIntyre does sometimes feel inspired to sculpt other birds—doves, shorebirds, a handful of herons and songbirds—purely for artistic value. At the moment, he’s carving a conch shell for a show he’s doing in December. McIntyre also paints landscapes, inspired by scenes of winter and early spring.
A CONNECTION TO THE LAND
Outside of his art, McIntyre is also a staunch conservationist. “I’ve always been interested in conservation, ever since I was a kid,” he says. “That’s something that’s always been part of me.” Born and raised in Beaufort, S.C., he saw beautiful places where he grew up hunting turned into luxury developments. “I became concerned about saving some of that.”
McIntyre says hunting itself inspires his commitment to preserving natural habitats. “When you’re spending so much time out there, even on the coldest days, it just becomes part of you,” he says, adding that hunters as a group are major fundraisers for conservation efforts. He, too, has made a tangible investment in conservation by deciding with his wife to protect the farm where they live as a natural jewel for posterity by having it put into a conservation easement, meaning the property can never be subdivided for development.
McIntyre feels lucky. Self described as “one of the worst businesspeople you’ll ever talk to,” he’s grown his customer base organically—through decoy shows, commissions, and collectors who come back again and again. He has succeeded solely through his love for the art and belief in his vision.
“Part of the process of being an artist is you have to figure out who you are and what’s going to be the best way for you to say what you’ve got to say with your subject matter,” he says. “I think I’ve been able to do that pretty well.”
