I’ve spent some time carving and finning and weight testing and swimming some new creations early this winter. My hands have the usual cuts, scrapes and calluses to prove it. I don’t always enjoy the parts of artistic creation equally and sometimes, painting is the least enjoyable. This is because it is the most difficult part of creating a fish decoy or lure in which to achieve what resides in my imagination for the piece itself. Folk art is that way, it seems, at least for me. The finishing touch, the last steps, the clothing that covers the mysteries underneath, that’s the stuff that takes the most intricate use of my time.
I like to do what I did this time, which is work on three or four fish at once and finish the blanks, the carving, the fins, the weight all at the same time, working through one fish at a time with the same steps. Then I have four primered decoys watching me, waiting to find out what they will look like together. Then I get out an old book that is serving double time (with its trashed cover) as a palette and I squeeze out some white and some blue and I mix too much cause that’s what always happens and I put blue on four fish where blue has been waiting to go. It is hard to wait the necessary time for layers to dry. I’ve started, I’m ready to go, it’s all one big canvas that isn’t, that is actually four unique elusive illusions. However, just like carving, or taking your time with writing and editing, this part teaches you patience. It takes layers and steps and sometimes happy mistakes which aren’t mistakes at all to get the desired look.
I really enjoy a mix of realism and imagination when it comes to painting fish. The folk art part is me. The realistic part is the perch. It will never look exactly like a perch, pike, bluegill, crappie, sucker, mouse, frog, etc., but it will look enough like something to make you think it could be. I enjoy trying to mimic the effects of oil paint with acrylic. This is why I don’t very often use an airbrush. I like the look of brush strokes, the uneven layers and sometimes blobs of paint. I enjoy looking at and feeling the texture of a piece when I’m finished, not unlike the scales of a fish. I know what my fingers felt when they were holding the brush light or heavy to make each one of those strokes.
Sometimes a slip of concentration turns into the defining feature of the decoy, sometimes the antique glass eyes I’ve chosen give it the personality that no other decoy will ever have. This particular fish in the picture I made for a fan of Hamm’s and perch. It is one of a kind and it was fun on many levels. It doesn’t fit into any mold and without my initials on the bottom, unless you knew my painting style, and the fact that I use vintage tins and eyes, you’d be hard pressed to nail down who made it. When I’m creating, I like it that way, I enjoy each time for the first time, versus completing the same fish, say, for the fortieth time. It’s just what makes me happy.
There’s a bunch of my decoys marked by my woodburning tool as “t ELY” or “TJS” or “ELY” on eBay currently. They were all purchased by a collector from Michigan over the last few years. I haven’t heard from him in a while, and I suspect that he is no longer with us and the vast collection, including many other carvers, is being sold off. It is fun to think of my fish travelling all over the United States and the world. Thinking of them in people’s homes and under the ice waiting with their spearing companions for the Northern Pike to come in. Thinking of how much they are enjoyed rivals the enjoyment I had when I held each finished one in my hands or when I swam some of them under the ice for the first time myself.
To create functional art is a strange feeling. Sure, some folks just collect and display them as art and that’s more than fine, that’s wonderful. However, each is made to swim and function and spear over if you want, and to create that type of art, to know that these decoys could be swimming in circles or froggy jaunts and jerky mouse movements under the ice is interesting to consider. I wonder what the fish swimming in think, I wonder if they’ll end up as dinner or in the pickling jar.
By the time you read this, these four will have gone to new homes and new lakes and it will be time to start over. Not just with a blank canvas, but with a new piece of white cedar, dried for years in my garage, the grain waiting, the shape of the log waiting with the decoy inside; waiting for the perfect time to come out. 2026 is waiting for us, for our shapes and colors, for our cuts and scrapes, for our creative spirits. There will be mistakes, there will be surprises and there will swim tests and fishing expeditions. We might get skunked and we might see the fish of a lifetime. It’s gonna be a great year, I can see it in my mind’s eye!
