News

Select Exhibitions, Publications, Galleries, Talks, & Press

Below are select listing and links for Mark, Ian and Colin McNair.

Atlantic Wildfowl Heritage Museum, McNair & Sons Decoys: A Special Exhibition. Museum Exhibition at the Historic Dewitt Cottage, Virginia Beach, VA. Opening September 20, 2025.

Center For American Decoys, Peoria Riverfront Museum, Celebrate American Bird Decoys with Carver Mark McNair and Decoy Specialist Colin McNair, Special museum program, June 6-7, 2025. Support provided by Art Bridges Foundation.

A Legendary Carver’s Chesapeake Chops. Garden & Gun Magazine. Feature article on Mark McNair by Nic Brown, April/May 2024.

Modern Huntsman, Volume 11, cover feature on Mark McNair

Wendell Gilley Museum, People-Nature-Art: Mark, Ian, and Colin McNair, Special museum program, June 20-21, 2023

Wings of Wonder: The Remarkable Story of The Cobb Family and the Priceless Decoys They Created on Their Island Paradise, Book, By Dr. S. Lloyd Newberry, Sporting Classics, 2020, Contributing Author on Decoy X-Rays.

The Real Decoys: Eastern Shore family creates world-class folk art, Distinction Magazine, Fall 2020

Annual Special Exhibition and Sale of Carvings by Father and Sons McNair, The Audubon Gallery, Charleston, South Carolina, February 2012-2019.

Antiques and The Arts Weekly, July 2015.

Exhibition and Sale of New Works by The McNairs, Mark, Ian, and Colin July 24-25, 2015,

The Nature of American Bird Decoys, lecture, The Fall Antiques Show, Virginia and the The Downtown Association, NYC, 2014

The Sporting Sale 2014, Auction, Copley Fine Art Auctions

Copley Spotlight, Copley Fine Art Auctions, 2013

The Sporting Sale 2013, Auction, Copley Fine Art Auctions

Carving a Legacy, College of Charleston Magazine, Spring 2015 (view pdf)

Bonfire of Swans, Book, Creekside Art Gallery , 2012, contributing author

Chesapeake Life Magazine, The Next Generation, November 2008.

Ward Museum of Wildfowl Art, Salisbury, Maryland | Chips Off The Old Block: Decoy Traditions Of Virginia’s Eastern Shore | June 30 - November 12, 2006. Exhibited

Colin is the contributing author on decoy X-Rays in this new and definitive book on Cobb Island decoys.

From an ongoing lecture circuit on the subject of Decoy X-Rays

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As Copley Fine Art Auction’s Decoy Specialist, Colin is regular guest on the Ducks Unlimited Podcast. He also shares specialist presentations for clubs and events across the country.

Ducks Unlimited Video Podcast. Episode 643. Decoy X-Rays with Katie Burke, Mike Brasher, and Colin McNair

Commissions

Please click here to contact us for information on available works and commissions.

or if you prefer galleries contact

Copley Fine Art Auctions

Stephen B. O'Brien, Jr. Fine Art

Press Downloads

If you are writing an article about Colin online, you are free to use images of our work on your website or blog if you use proper credits, and alert us prior to publishing. You can download low-res images of Colin's work by copying from the website gallery.

If you would like to feature Colin in a book or magazine, please email us to request hi-res images. We request that you properly credit each piece and send us a printed copy of your book, magazine, or newspaper in the mail for our archive.

“It is not the material or the style that matters: It is what happened in the hands of the man who made it. The one question was and is: Does the decoy catch the bird in body and spirit? If it does, we may truly call it art.”

— Adele Earnest, "The Art of The Decoy" '65

This is our first release in a series of short informational videos featuring Copley specialists. Here, decoy specialist, Colin McNair, discusses a Canvas-covered Canada Goose by George Boyd.

From a series of informational shorts for Copley Fine Art Auctions