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Ducks Unlimited Podcast is a constant discussion of all things waterfowl; from in-depth hunting tips and tactics, to waterfowl biology, research, science, and habitat updates. The DU Podcast is the go-to resource for waterfowl hunters and conservationists. Ducks Unlimited is the world's leader in wetlands conservation.
Katie Burke: Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. This is your host, Katie Burke, and this is part two of my interview with Guy Taplin. So, when was the first time you… So, when you came to America for Decoys, did you come to go to Cobb Island or what was… Yeah, what was the draw to come over?
Guy Taplin: Well, you know, looking at it now, in my age, you look back on your own journey. I remember a poet here called T.S. Eliot. He said, with all their journeyings and wandering, we arrived back where we started and know it. The trick of that is knowing. We know it for the first time. And I think I see he came off of a plane once and somebody said, do you believe in God? And he went, I don't believe in God, I know. And I thought, ah. And that's what you do as you get older. With a bit of luck, you know. When you're younger, you haven't got a blooming clue what you're doing, it seemed to me. You know, I missed so many good opportunities, yet I was up for the journey. And I went primarily to see Henry Fleckenstein. He'd published that book, Decoys of the Mid-Atlantic Region, and I missed him that time. But the second time I went, I stayed with him and Barbara, and he was writing Southern Decoys. And I took a cob out that I got from Bobby Richardson to the island and photographed it. It's in his book. It's on a breakwater with the old life-saving station behind it. And He, I realised, and I would be the same, you're like an apprentice to them. They need to share their enthusiasm. And he shared it a lot with me. We went on a few adventures together. He took me to, and when I went into C.Panel in that hotel, the oldest hotel in Ocean City, he took me out to the garage. I mean, the garage was as big as my house. And on a shelf was this Cobb, Nathan Cobb Canada goose with the inn in it. And it just reeked of salt water to me. And Pennell brought it over. He brought it over. I've still got it. He's got it standing at my front door with his goose. And I bought it off of him. And the next day we went up to Purdy's with cash and he bought Purdy's shotgun with it. and which presumably still got you know and it was that you know not many people barking as that you know it is to both of us not just him you think why would you why would you do that you know yeah i but i can't
Katie Burke: I get it. I understand wanting to be there and it is different. I didn't really know because where I grew up, there wasn't any decoys or anything. So I didn't really even know about old decoys until grad school because I went to grad school in Philadelphia. We worked with Tuckerton Seaport in New Jersey. So that was like the first access I had to it. And then I got this job and I got more into it. And then the first time you go to the Eastern Shore, it's surprising. It is. It's surprising that… It's the way it is, especially like with the big cities that are not far away and then you go out there and it's very different. And to be in those guys' shops and to see them work and where they live and yeah, it's different. And I can see why that would have a big impact on you, especially like, so after coming to America and seeing that, How much longer did it take you to move to where you are now and set up your shop there?
Guy Taplin: Well, I… Well, when I met Rubina and we fell in love, like a lot of romances, it was not an easy one. You know, half of me wanted to be a monk, half of me wanted… It was in love. It was very tricky. Eventually, I sort of made my mind up and left Regent's Park. And a friend of mine on, it's somewhere called Butler's Wharf, it's opposite Tower Bridge, they're old spice houses. And he had a spray, he made furniture, and he had an empty spray booth, no door on it. And he said, work there. And I bought a bandsaw, you know, basic equipment, you know, rotary drive tool, that sort of thing. And what was great about it was that he was serving the glitterati of London with his furniture, the people with money. So they were walking in and out of his workshop and then seeing my stuff. And I think I was selling them for £15, you know, sort of $17, $18. In those days, this was back in the 70s, I could live on that a week. Yeah, my rent was £9 a week. I had a Morris Traveller car. I didn't need anything else. All I wanted to do was to make birds. And that's how I started. And then he told me about a gallery in London, the Foucault Gallery. And a lot of my life has been literally like Forrest Gump. I've had so many jobs you wouldn't believe. I walked into things that other people just would not. I'm not interested in security. I haven't got a pension. I just live by what I do. And I think life likes a winner. It likes you to get on with it, and if you're having a bad time, try and put a smile on your face for other people. It's not all about you all the time, and it takes a long time to knock that out of yourself when you're young, because when you're young you're up for anything really, you're bonkers as well. You know, I was just up for it all the time. And it's sustained me for 45 years, what I'm doing. I mean, even my age, I've done my day's work today. And I've got a show in London in February. so I don't know how to explain it beyond that really. I think one's enthusiasm, you think it can dull as you get older, with a lot of artists, what I call proper artists, you know, I mean the ones we know about, painters, they start to lose it. Either they die young, like Van Gogh or Rothko, people like that, or they fade. you know, it's not easy. The body gets old, your emotions get old, your mind gets old, the ideas don't come so regularly. You literally change emotionally as well, as well as physically. But I mean, I'm not, I don't make half, I used to make 16 things a week. when I first started, 16 pieces. And that was all going into the antique trade. I never signed them. And when I got into an art gallery, it was a portal gallery in the West End of London, they wanted me to sign everything. And I didn't want to sign it. You know, I didn't think it was, I know it sounds a bit daft, but I didn't think it was coming out of me, not my ego. It was coming out of the unconscious. And I didn't, of course, I was going to this Buddhist thing at the time, so you do tend to think like that, but I didn't, I didn't want my name on it. I didn't want my name on it, you know. I did, I remember that, um, that thing, the Homer's Odyssey, and, um, the guy in it, he, he did his traveling, he lost his crew, he did well at Troy, and then he got punished, really, and he finished up, he lost his crew, he lost his boat, he was in rags on his own land, and the shepherd says to him, who are you? And he said, I'm nobody. And I thought, oh, how wonderful, almost to be invisible. You know, you just got your birds. You know, as we started this conversation, what do you do? I make wooden birds. You know, that's it. Wonderful.
Katie Burke: So what do you think it is about the birds that, why do you think that that's the thing that drew the birds, like that species in general, like that's the part of nature that you connect with so much?
Guy Taplin: I agree with you. Well, I thought this many, many, many, many times. I walked down the river yesterday and it was a chap below the sea wall and he had a tripod and he had a lens on his camera, you would not believe, as big as dustbin. And I said, what are you doing? He was photographing dragonflies. Now, I think they're beautiful dragonflies. They're just wonderful. But I think with birds, I mean, I thought, well, you could do animals. I mean, Shepard did all the African stuff, paintings. I don't know why, intuitively, unconsciously, I'm drawn to birds, but I certainly am. But they're around us in a very physical way. I believe, I believe, I'm not 100% sure, but the shorebirds, the waders, are very close to us, you know, in how we're made up. But they go on these, and waders in particular, which is what I make most of the time, go on these wonderful long flights, they're transitory, they're moving around all the time, they're just the calls, the call you make, for example, or you hear a big group of Brent geese going… If you talk to someone like Grayson Chesser, he, I'm sure, I met him a long time ago, he would, and Pete Peterson, they would say exactly, they would just say, yeah, exactly. You know, it's, it's a smell. I was talking to, I was talking to John day before yesterday. He was going to go and see some little cameras backed by Tom Bernard miniatures. and I said to him, you know, it's not just getting these, it's the journey, not the possession, it's the journey, not arriving, that's the important thing, it's the journey, all the time, the journey, don't matter when you shoot anything or you catch anything, you're on the riverbank, and he, I said, you go in the house, the person's house, where there's bananas are, and you will smell, as you go in, you'll smell the house, and the person will talk to you, and over a period of time, maybe an hour, they'll come down a bit, you know, they'll be more friendly towards you and make a cup of tea and all. It's all that that goes into collecting something as well, you know, it's the experience. So I think when people used to collect eggs, you know, people collected eggs, I collected eggs, and people think, you've got them in a drawer, what's the point? But you remember the day And what went into the day when, you know, in planning the journey to find these birds or a decoy, you know, when I used to go down on the Delmarva, I would, I was on my own all the time. I had a car and I'd go to Chincoteague and walk across that wonderful causeway. It's like magic for old, out to Saxis. And I'd go down the Delmarva and go to the, I would always go to the Exmor Diner. And that journey down there, and I'd knock on doors, you know, somebody said, oh, he's got some decoys, you know, I'm going to go there. And they always said to me, they ain't eating anything, you know, and I thought, and we don't come out with that, and we haven't got that saying in England, so it means basically in custody, and they're not going to sell them, you know. And Purnell had been there, Roy had been there first, Roy Ball, and then Purnell had been down there, and Mackie had obviously knocked about, you know, and got a lot of the stuff, probably not for very much money. But you can't do that anymore. I mean, the auction houses have got it all now. I mean, Copley's online, you know, they don't have a live audience and I don't know how it would be any different, but it comes down to like stamps and coin auctions in the end, which is a great pity, really. But then if you're a maker, you know, you've got Gibeon and look at Frank Finney with that box he sold. What was it, $60,000? I think people are falling over. Yeah, it's amazing. It's absolutely amazing. It is. And Pete, I remember, Well, Pete Peterson wrote an article in Decoy Magazine, and he said, if I stand on the doors of my workshop, I can hear the surf breaking on Cobb Island. And I wrote back to him and said, I can stand on the door of my workshop on the Essex coast, and I can hear the surf breaking on Cobb Island. You know, it was that affinity. And once the Folk Art Museum in New York had a show here in the Barbican, And I walked into the room, and there was the walled humpback pigtail there that they've got. And I was on my own, and it was a really weird experience. I felt that these… I was one with these people who'd made these things. It was like being in the sunshine, or walking past an Indian restaurant, the smell of the tandoori, you know. It was a unique experience. I think if you're a truly creative person, you do go through difficult times, but you do have wonderful times as well.
Katie Burke: Yeah, that's true. Have you always used found objects for your birds?
Guy Taplin: A lot of the time. Yeah. Yeah.
Katie Burke: Okay. And is that part of what those like the Cobb and those, that area of Virginia, North Carolina, those guys who also used, does that draw you to them as well that they also used found objects often?
Guy Taplin: Well, it's partly that, but I think if you talk to a lot of men that are in some form of, probably working with themselves, of construction of some sort, they can't resist a bit of wood. You walk past a skip, you know, and they'll have cleaned out somebody's house, it'll be 100 year old timber. The only thing about it is I have a lot of nails in it, but it's something about picking up a piece of wood on the foreshore, you know, a bit of four by four, a plank, you know, eight foot long, come off of a boat, you know, they cleaned it off or chucked it in or it's just got swept off, and you pick it, you go back to your workshop and you've got a drawing and you use, you glue it up, And at the end of the day, you've got, you've made something out of it. I mean, it's, it's just a form of alchemy, really. I've always thought, you know, from dross, you turn it into gold. And it always interested me. And also, again, but we said it's that contact with the people that went before, that, that lineage, you know, when I was interested, I still am, in Rinzai Zen, There was always that respect paid back to the people hundreds of years ago that went on that journey as well and transmitted. It's all about transmission. You know, the cobs are not doing it now, but Nathan's gone, Elkanna's gone, Arthur, George, Lucius, they've all gone. But their work, it transmits something, you know? That's the only way to look at it. It's not picking up a radio signal.
Katie Burke: And then I'm guessing when you pick up that wood, you obviously don't know until you have that piece of wood what it's going to be. Like you don't have a plan for it until you have it, right? And you don't, you use multiple pieces of fountain wood, right, for your birds. You don't create, yeah, you use different things, correct?
Guy Taplin: Yeah, I like the fact, I suppose, when I had an email from Cameron, he'd made this Brent goose and it was lovely. The thing is with carving, you've got to get the profile right first, the wood, you know, without any paint on it. If you haven't got that right, you forget it. And then you've got to paint the blooming thing, you know. Now, he's extremely good, McIntyre, you know, I've never seen, I mean, What's his name? Mark McNair. He's good. But they, I think, I think Cameron is extremely good, you know. And he said, I can't remember his exact words in the email. He said, more or less, paying homage to the ones that went before, you know, that sort of thing, that contact. And if you're any good, you know, I mean, in the Buddhist thing, you bow. You just put your hands together and bow. And thank you very much. You know, it's a sort of recognition. It's not all coming from you. There's other people, other things, other people, things you can't see involved in it. You know, I'm not making it sound too spiritual.
Katie Burke: We're all products of what came before, yeah.
Guy Taplin: Yeah, absolutely. And you don't want to get too overly about it, but it is important to acknowledge that in the heart, you know, not in the head. And I remember we were talking to Henry once and he said to me, you're the reincarnation of Georgie Cobb. Because they never found Georgie, you know. And when you look at the pictures of him in his book, standing there with his waders on, you know, you think, what a life those men had, you know.
Katie Burke: Oh, that's cool. Okay, and then I have one more technical question because I was looking at your work and I was really interested about it. Okay, because one thing that you do differently, I think, than anyone else and very well, I think it was just by looking like my short little time looking at your stuff, but when I saw your shorebirds and how you group them together and how their composition as a whole. So when you're putting that together, I'm guessing you're putting that together as a whole piece. You're not thinking about the individual bird, you're thinking about it and the grouping of it.
Guy Taplin: What you tend to do, because I can work very fast, you know, I might make, well, I don't make so many now, but I've got the energy that I had, but, but I, so when I could make 16 things a week, you know, that would probably be two groups. I mean, that was finished. But my, if you want dramatic poses, which you really do in groups, you've only got a few. You've got the facing forward, you've got the facing back, you've got preening, feeding. They're the four dominant, in my book anyway, dominant position. You can vary that a lot. And then you've got the painting, you know, they don't all have to be the same. And if I'm honest about it, I'm a bit slow on the uptake, you know, in a way like, you look at Forrest Gump, you never thought he was a particularly brainy bloke. in the book and a film, you know, driven by intuition and things that happened to him, and he just went along with it. And I went into that wonderful museum on Chincoteague, it's gone now, and they did, I think it was Cigar Daisy, he was supposed to be the resident carver, he was never there when I was there, but he made these groups that were on the wall. And I think basically I got the idea from there. And in America, I think they're probably doing it a bit now, but no one was doing that. No one was making groups. It was generally individual birds. I mean, it's all right for old Grayson to say, you know, you know, and he's right that a cob a cob group would be wonderful. But to be honest with you, you've got to sell the blooming things. I mean, at the end of the day, you might love what you're doing and all that, but you've got to earn a living. So who's going to buy a group of 10 geese, you know, or something like that? And also, you don't get for a group of 10 geese what you get for 10 individual birds. The gallery I go through, you know, I can only sell, I mean, this is a very, very good gallery in St James's, David Messam in St James's in London. They can only sell, when I have a show, I have a show every two years, 60 pieces I put in, and I can only put 20 groups, and then I come down, and also not everyone can afford that sort of stuff, so you make small things as well. for, you know, it's like, you know, cheap housing really in a way, you know, and also you don't, it gives you a variety. You can't keep coming up with ideas all the time, you know, if you're making a lot of work. I'm almost, the guy, I can't remember his name now, is similar to me, Birch, isn't it? Is it Reggie Birch? He does work not a million miles away from me, whereas someone like Bill Gibeon, I like Gibeon's work, but it's very polished by comparison to my work, you know, and that's why I was never very keen on, from a collecting point of view, on Crow. Though I did get a dust jacket plover, but my one is very worn. It's in that folio, you know, I can't remember whether we did those two folios now. But yeah, yours have so much.
Katie Burke: Though, when you look at yours in the group, and I guess this is what I connected with is, they have so much life to them. Even with the simple sculptural form, like you have that simple sculptural form, which you can see through the Dudley and the Cobb influence. But yet, then again, they feel very alive in their motion. I can almost see those plovers sitting on a sandbar. The way they're reacting in a group is very unique, especially with that simplified form.
Guy Taplin: Well, I think you're right. I think if you do it long enough, I mean, I always think of people that I can't remember, I'm trying to remember, I can't remember the bloke who's a very top-end UK guitarist. Anyway, it doesn't matter. You know, they get where they are through part genius. Well, let's say 10% genius, 9% hard work, you know. And if you go out to anything, if you're driven long enough, you're going to get good at it, you know. But most people aren't, you know, and you can't say to yourself, aren't I wonderful because I can and they can't. It's a gift. You know, I can't, I don't, when you look at my birds in that film, I don't plan what you see. they just come out like it. You know, I know it sounds a bit daft, but you don't, you know, I remember the old saying about somebody talking to a centipede with all those legs, and it said, how do you manage to walk with all those legs? As soon as he started to think about it, it fell over. And I think it's the same with anyone that makes, it becomes like automatic writing. And if you, when I'm right, usually when I'm working, I'm listening to the radio or audio book, and I'm only half there. It's like a sort of almost like a form of meditation. And really the unconscious is doing all. If I step out the way, the unconscious can do the work, you know, through me. That's how I look at it.
Katie Burke: Yeah, you know, I talked to Cameron, I saw Cameron, and this is what you just said that I thought about something he was saying, and I wonder how this applies to your work and how you don't unconsciously, it affects what you're doing. But he had done this incredible dead map that he just finished. It was a full limit, I think, and it was very complicated. And he was talking about how, you know, the wood grain and all this stuff, you had to really think about it because at points, because he did each, you know, was a whole piece and he had to go, what he would normally go with the grain to do this, he would have to go against the grain. And if you go against the grain, you are setting yourself up for mistakes, right? Like you have this much higher percentage that you will take more out than you need and all that. So- Yes. Yes. Paul, I'm guessing when you use found pieces and you're kind of doing it in a meditative state, I'm guessing you're kind of unconsciously letting that wood take you where it can go the easiest, would you say, or no?
Guy Taplin: No, no, I think you're right. I mean, when you look, I was thinking, as Marv got older, my memory's gone, but I was thinking of that bloke, is it Safford? Yes. God, I mean, you know, that sleeping, that sleeping goose, you know, you think, I mean, he's laminated as well. You think, was he getting the wood, you know, like, because he couldn't fold it and because nobody in their right mind would laminate it. Well, I wouldn't. Oh, you could hollow it out like that way, but it's also makes it very vulnerable to fall into pieces. And he's, and he's got this bird, you know, with his head turned around and all that. And you think, what is he on? You know, he was only using it for hunting, you know, on a sort of all rigged up together, fixed, as I understand it. And when you look at the wards, I mean, I think the wards, I know they go on about Crowell all the time. I mean, he was very good, but nearly all of his stuff that got money was on the decoratives, you know. But when you look at the wards, the early wards, the fat jaws, that wonderful black duck with a high back on it, you know, it sort of shoots up in the air and the head's lowing down. I haven't got one of those.
Katie Burke: Then you've got the humpbacks. Yeah, and the bishop's heads are too.
Guy Taplin: Pinto, the Bishop's Head. I bought a humpback and it's got the Bishop's Head brass thing on it and underneath. And then I got some Knotteds as well. And then it went up to the classic canvasbacks, the 36s, which I personally think are the best ones of that period, you know. After that, for me, they tail off. But, you know, you go and you think, these two blokes, you know, they're only ordinary guys. I met them. Bobby Richardson used to give me a goose, a wooden goose of his, and a dead goose, plucked, and send me down to Crisfield and give him the goose and get him to sign the other one for $50. And I spent a lot of time with him down there. And he was just an ordinary guy, you know. Well, he obviously wasn't ordinary, but it was just extraordinary that them two guys should have turned out as much as they did as well.
Katie Burke: Yeah. Okay. So I talked to Pete and Grayson about the Ward brothers and their time spent with them. And they said that you couldn't really get them to talk about why they did what they did, except you couldn't get a lot out of them. Was it the same for you?
Guy Taplin: I don't know, I'm only guessing, but I think they were very loved. And I think they were probably shy. I think Lem was a shy man. I think they probably didn't understand and weren't very comfortable with their popularity. You know, I know when people, I'm sure Cameron's the same, I think people within themselves older flame, but they don't want it seen on the outside, you know. It's nice to say, you sell something, you know, for quite a lot of money, and you think, well, thank, I've done well there, you know. But a lot of people, they come up to me and say, you know, I've got a studio on the front on the river, and they go, I think it's wonderful stuff you make, and And I don't know where to put myself, you know. Now I've learned to say, oh, thank you very much. That's very kind of you, you know. But I don't feel like that about my work. You know, I feel like I'm quite adequate. But it's not about that. It's not about it being wonderful and all the rest of it. You know, when I've made it, it's finished. I don't know if somebody said, what's your favourite bird? And they said, the next one. You know, and it's… I think the wolves were the same. I really do. You know, they were gumps, you know, they were there.
Katie Burke: Yeah, I was just talking to a wildlife artist. He had won the duck stamp, the one that just came out. Yes, yes. And with the duck stamp, which is interesting because, you know, and I think in a way this relates because they, you know, like you, these wildlife artists and then, you know, waterfowl carvers, y'all live these very… solitary lives that you spend mostly with nature, right? They tend to live in remote places where they can be there with their subject and get time, you know, personal time with it. Like, so you're in the environment of what you're inspired by. So you tend to leave this kind of solitary existence. And then for the duck stamp artist, which is kind of a shock, especially the first time they win it, They're then thrown onto this public tour for a year, which is pretty the opposite of what they enjoy doing and how they spend their time. But if you want people, as you said, to buy your work, which you do because it's your living, you're forced to have this marketing side to yourself. I think can be very difficult, especially when what makes you good is the introspective, solitary time with nature, right? Yes, yes, yes, exactly. It's a very contradictory thing you have to do, and I'm sure it was the same for the wards.
Guy Taplin: I think it was, I mean, I don't think they set out to, I'm sure they didn't, you know. I remember reading something about Granger McCoy, he's down south, isn't he, in Southern Carolina, I think, I don't know where he is now, but he said that he had a show in New York, sold out, and he said, well, now what? You know, I've got to do it all over again? And I thought, well, yeah, basically you have, you know, because it's not about having a show, it's the journey again, you know, it's the journey of going back to your workshop, You know, you had a show, it's successful. It's always an anticlimax. You have a private view. You're exhausted talking to people for a couple of, you know, for a few days, you're worn out. And then you think, oh, I'm going to get back. And I always remember, you know, I'm going to get, I'm going to get back to the work. And I've been through, you know, the world as at the moment, a lot of deep crises, you know, and I thought, well, if I don't sell anything, I'm still going to go on making stuff, you know? And that's what it, for me, it boils down to. Have you ever come across, he's dead now, Burton Moore Jr.? No. No, you look him up. Burton Moore Jr. He was a painter and he did a wonderful picture, I've got a couple of them, of a Dudley canvas bag sitting on an old window shelf on the curry tuck. And it's the window, because it's a sand dune.
Katie Burke: I feel like I know who this is, yeah.
Guy Taplin: Oh, he's really good. He's a bit like Andrew Wyeth, that technique of egg tempera. But it's a wonderful picture and captures for me, again, that it's not a lost world, but is a lost world in a way, because that whole way of earning a living's gone. You know, they didn't have mobile phones or the internet, lucky buggers, you know. Because I think it's changed their life considerably. And I try to veer away from that world, although we're using it now. It's jolly convenient, you know.
Katie Burke: Yeah, it's tough. A lot of these younger artists, they have to use that to build their client base, but like yourself and Cameron, he's already at the point that he doesn't need to do that. But someone who did a very good job… with doing that was Jerry Talbot. That's how he got his name out there, and now he has a good client base through that. Yeah.
Guy Taplin: I mean, they go through Instagram, don't they?
Katie Burke: I'm sure Cameron- Have you met Jerry? Have you met Jerry? No. You would enjoy Jerry Tout and he does, you know, a lot of North Carolina style birds.
Guy Taplin: I'll look him up. But it's funny that a lot of people that I know, which might say so, I'm sure Cameron uses Adele, his wife, to do his emails for him. He does. Yeah. I can email now, but it's taken me a long time to you just haven't got that mentality you know you're thinking from the left side of your head all the time and it doesn't fit in it doesn't chime well you know the thought going on instagram for me um i couldn't a lot of people i know are doing it really well and good luck good for them you know good for them
Katie Burke: Yeah, no, I mean, I have a love-hate relationship with it myself, so… So I feel you. I can't get away with it though, I'm under 40, so I still have to do it.
Guy Taplin: Yeah, I'm sure you're good at it. Well, I have to use my daughter all the time. Yeah, I'm okay with it. Have you got any decoys, Katie?
Katie Burke: Not that many. People ask me that a lot. And one of the things that keeps me from really… I've gotten a few here and there that people have gifted me. And the thing that… I get these collections for a year. at the museum that I personally get to work with. So it kind of scratches the itch, right? Like right now I have an Illinois River collection from Dave Kneebone that'll be with me for a year. And then I've got a Canada goose collection that the Safford sleeping goose is in coming next year. So, yep, it is. Yeah, I don't really… I mean, yes, there's definitely some birds that I would want, particularly… Honestly, I like getting birds from you guys. Those are the ones I find more special because I know y'all, and when I meet you, and then especially if I could ever afford one of Cameron's one day, I will want one of his. Actually, what I want from Cameron is a landscape painting. I don't want a decoy, I want a landscape painting. Oh, I know.
Guy Taplin: It's wonderful how people like Cameron, I suppose it's just a genetic thing, isn't it? I mean, because you think how far away Cameron is from Silicon Valley, emotionally, I imagine. Or me, come to that, you know. And then you hear about these guys, you know, making all this money and stuff and probably could buy an island and all the kit, you know. But then I look to Mark McNair, where he lives, so it's a fantastic place. Yeah. And Curtis Badger, you know, he's, I read a book by him called Bellevue Farm, and I would advise anyone that's interested in this conversation to get Bellevue Farm, because he, again, he captured the atmosphere of the family that were on the farm, probably pre-Civil War, their graveyard was still there, you know, he uncovered it and preserved it. And he photographed and listened to the wildlife down there. And, you know, some people… Curtis has got a real gift, you know, he's researched the Eastern Shore a lot. And that guy that flies up and down taking photographs, they're amazing.
Katie Burke: I guess this is something that I guess, you know, I personally have thought about, you know, not right now, but like, I guess, you know, last 10 years or so. And I think it comes up a lot. And you mentioned it a little bit when you were talking about the wards in our last little bit that we were talking about. That idea of, you know, having a goal and spending so much time trying to reach what you think will make you happy, right? And if you get this thing, then you'll be happy, right? Like if you reach this goal, then this will set you up for, I guess. lifetime happiness, but that's not the case. You get there and you realize that's not it. And I think that's something we all have in common. And for you, especially with someone with your background with Buddhist teachings and things of that. Even having that background, how did you navigate that experience of reaching something and then realizing it didn't give you what you thought it would?
Guy Taplin: Well, I never really thought it was going to give me anything, to be honest with you. got caught up in it. And a lot of people, there's a bloke who's dead now called James Wentworth Day. He was what you'd call a knob, you know, real posho. And he was a bloke, great bloke. And he documented all the wildfowls up this coast. He wrote a book called Coastal Adventure. And he said to me, don't do it, you know, but he didn't know anything about decoys. He thought I was actually going to make decoys, which would have been absolutely hopeless. But he didn't know anything about them. I mean, well, I don't make decoratives, but they are decorative nevertheless. And they're not for use. They're more for decoying the human heart, really, you know, giving people pleasure. But To me, the trouble is you can coin all these phrases like mindfulness and going for a walk for your mental health and, you know, and living in the moment and all this, but you actually got to experience those things. I mean, they're just words. And I suppose as I've got older, I tend to live more day to day now. I mean, I've got a daughter, and a granddaughter living at the bottom of the garden in what was my dad's house. And, you know, it's not just my needs. They let me get my work done. There's not too much pressure, you know, within the family to do other things. I think one's expectancy… I think the trouble is with us as human beings, and you include me in this, is that we're never quite satisfied with what we're doing right now. unless we're talking about ourselves, which I'm doing at the moment. And we're always looking for the tomorrow or the next hour or when am I going to do tonight? And it's very hard to just sit still and look around you, you know, look at what's going on And I remember when I was doing The Rings of Isaiah and I got into a bit of an emotional tie-up, and the woman that took us, she trained in Japan for many years, and she said, just look at the birds, you know, just look at the birds. Get outside of yourself. You know, that's the trouble with people, I'll include Cameron in this one, that we live inside ourself all the time. And a lot of the time, we're supported by that, by the unconscious in our work. You know, things happen to us. We learn to survive the difficult periods within ourselves. But sometimes it can get very difficult. You know, your insides let you down. And because you're not a social animal, you have to find you have to find your own support somewhere you know it's uh you know you're very dependent on my mum's side of the family they were all quite eccentric you know um to say the least all the proper extenders and i The main person in that lot was a bloke called Neville, my great-great-grandfather. And my mum said, oh, he can imitate all the birds and acne marshes, you know. And yet he carried a gun in the East End, you know, the East End of London. I'm an East Ender, a cognis, within the sound of bow bells. It was rough. you know, police had to go in pairs all the time and things like that, you know, so it still is pretty rough down there. But it's, I try more and more, my life now is without, I'm not being depressing, but it's now, you know, I'm coming up to the end of it, basically. I want to make the most of I was rushing all the time, Katie, you know, rushing here, rushing there, getting my work done, filling this order up, you know, what they're going to do next, full of energy. And now I've slowed down a bit. I can, there's a Chinese saying, a bloke said, when he was young, he travelled all over the world, and now he's old, he travels more in his back garden, you know, and I think that's what happens probably when you get old, you slow down, you look around, if you haven't died of cancer, had an heart attack, you're in a wheelchair or got a bag hanging off of you, you, you know, you count your blessings, that's the main thing, bow and count your blessings. It's easy said, but you have to know, you know, going back to Jung, you have to know You have to experience life, not just in the head, but in the heart. It's very important that. And you earn it. It's not given to you free, you know. You know, I always look at the, I mean, I'm partly Christian in my beliefs, and I look at the journey of Christ, and we're going off the decoy thing here a bit, but boy, what a journey he had, you know, virtually stoned to death, crucified. And, you know, it's not always easy, and you do really have to count, it was a simple life, simple life. I always think Grace and Pete and those people, whether their lives are that simple, I don't know, Cameron, you know, they've made their own life. They've been very fortunate in being given that gift to make their own life. You know, you don't do it on your own.
Katie Burke: No, and it's very fortunate to get to do something that you love so much and make a living off of it.
Guy Taplin: It's a hard thing to do. And I know we've probably gone off the track a bit in these conversations, but basically you are talking about something, you know, somebody that makes wooden ducks, you get a magazine article and a picture of the guy in his workshop and all that. It's what goes on underneath. you know, underneath the product, the bird in his life, you know, why he's making that particular thing, how he feels, what's, you know, all sorts of things going on with different people, you know, things happen to them in there. I said to John Sullivan, I said, get the stories, you know, and he's written loads of bookshops. He's a dim and peg. They're coming over soon. They come over to see me, you know, and I take them around the coast and things and, he is somebody I'm very close to, you know. I wish I could get over more often, really, because it's such a… Yeah. It's such a wonder, especially that eastern shore.
Katie Burke: Yeah. Well, if you ever do, I want to know. I want to come see you. Likewise. Likewise. We can do this in person. Yes. Well, thank you so much, Guy. This is wonderful. Thank you so much. I'm really glad that you emailed me and that I'm really glad I called John Dieter and he said, do it.
Guy Taplin: Oh, John, he came over here and I took him to my workshop on the coast and the tide was up and they all had to paddle out to it, you know, because it was right across the road. And yeah, he's a great bloke. I like John. He's very good at his job.
Katie Burke: John, was Leanne with him?
Guy Taplin: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And he's changed that. He's turned that firm around, you know. I mean, he was doing pretty well anyway, but he's just very good at what he does.
Katie Burke: Oh, he is very good at what he does. Well, again, thank you so much. Thank you, Katie. This was great. This was fun. You made my morning.
Guy Taplin: If you come to England, if you come to Essex, come and see me.
Katie Burke: I will. Maybe I can convince these guys to come over there and film. Yeah, you should.
Guy Taplin: You should do it. You should come over. I mean, I don't know any other… I mean, there's plenty of artists here, but I don't know anyone else. There are people making birds, you know, but I'm not in contact with them.
Katie Burke: Yeah, there's plenty of habitat too.
Guy Taplin: Oh yeah, there's plenty of that. I'm a good cook as well, so watch out. All right, Katie. I hope you can make something out of this.
Katie Burke: Oh, I think we can. It'll be good. I think it was great. Thanks, Kasey. All right. Thank you. Have a good one. Thank you to our producer, Chris Isaac, and thanks to you, our listener, for supporting wetlands and waterfowl conservation.