The painter Anne Buckwalter, 38, says she doesn’t like clutter, but she makes an exception for bird decoys, which occupy surfaces throughout her house in Durham, Maine. “Anywhere there’s an empty space where a duck could go, there’s probably a duck there,” she says. She acquired many of them from her grandfather, a professional decoy carver and retailer, and her father, a hobbyist carver and collector. Long used by hunters to attract waterfowl, decoys have evolved into a folk art tradition over the past century — one that’s highly regional, since artisans often carve local birds.
The objects that adorn American homes are particularly interesting to Buckwalter, who paints domestic interiors and the sexual exploits that take place within them. The work in her recent exhibition at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, for example, was inspired by visits to female-owned homesteads in New England. Buckwalter, whose current show at the New York gallery Uffner & Liu runs through Nov. 1, has rejected many of the political and religious beliefs she grew up with as a member of a Methodist church in conservative Lancaster, Pa. But the decoys, carved from woods such as pine and white cedar, represent the parts of her upbringing she’s chosen to hold on to. They’re “a tether to my past self,” she says, “and my sense of home.”
The collection: Hand-carved bird decoys.
Number of pieces in the collection: 30.
Earliest acquisition: “My grandfather gave me my first carving, a songbird music box, when I was 5.”
Recent purchase: “A white cedar puffin, bought from a woodcarver in Lincolnville, Maine.”
One that got away: “A swan at an antique market in Brunswick. I didn’t know that I could justify spending $300 on a wooden swan.”
Most inexpensive: “A little pine loon around 3.5 inches long. It was maybe $20.”
Most precious: “A basswood avocet my dad made in 1986, the year before I was born. It was always on the shelf when I was growing up. He gifted it to me and my partner when we got married in 2020.”
Weirdest: “A pair of mergansers mounted onto a piece of driftwood. It’s one of my grandfather’s carvings from the late ’70s. It’s uncommon to have a pair, and this one is extra unusual: The female has a fish in her mouth.”
Longest sought-after: “A Canada goose my dad made. I remember ogling it when I was a kid. I love the tiny brushstrokes.”
Other collections: “A large library of erotic books that I use as reference material for my work: over 100 texts ranging from very academic to pornographic smut. It’s such a 180 from wooden ducks.”
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Photo assistant: Layton Davis
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