As soon as Stillwater native Chuck Black saw the single pintail duck land in a small pothole in the Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in southern Montana, he knew he had hit the jackpot.
Black, a wildlife artist, and his wife, Erica, had been tracking the drake over the course of two days during the spring of 2020. The pintail was one of the five eligible waterfowl species for the 2023 Federal Duck Stamp Art Contest, and Black thought the encounter was his best chance to videotape and photograph the duck as reference for a painting.
On their last day in the refuge, the couple rose before sunrise and quietly trekked to the site. “We lay prone on the shore, wrapped in a camouflage blanket, with our camera gear,” he said. “Sure enough, right on schedule, he dropped in and landed just 10 yards out from us. We got to observe him and video and photograph him as he waited for a hen, which was nesting nearby, to arrive. We were lucky. I knew right away, as soon as we left the pond that day, that I had come up with something.”
That something turned into an oil painting of the pintail duck and a cluster of cattails that won the coveted spot on the federal duck stamp scheduled to be issued sometime in late June 2024.
Black, 37, of Belgrade, Mont., watched the livestream of the judging on YouTube and said he started hyperventilating when he realized his painting had received the highest score. The competition included 199 entries.
“The final entry in the contest was a really good design,” he said. “We knew what score I was given, but then we had to wait all the way until the end. I felt like I was having a panic attack when I saw the score come up, and it was a couple of points below mine.
“It was unbelievable, and it still feels that way,” he said. “I don’t think my phone has stopped ringing. I’m still trying to come to grips.”
Videos, photos, sketches
It was the 10th time Black had entered the prestigious national contest and first time he made it to the final round of judging. He submitted his first entry in 2009.
“When I first started entering, I was really ambitious,” said Black, who won state duck stamp contests in California in 2015 and Colorado in 2013. “In more recent years, I’ve had to focus on a more practical use of my time to make my art into a career. I can’t devote that much time into something that most likely won’t happen, but this year, I had the right photos and videos, and I just knew I had to try with that.”
Video of waterfowl works better than a photo when capturing reference materials for his artwork, he said. “I think I get more out of the bird’s behavior,” he said. “It’s helpful at capturing the way the light hits it as it rotates and things like that.”
He turns to photos when he begins the sketching process. “Composition is a big thing, so I try to come up with all sorts of ideas using these materials I’ve gathered to figure out what composition is the most appealing.”
A panel of five art, waterfowl and stamp authorities judges each competition, which is run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The judges give each entry a score by holding up a card with a number. Judges evaluate entries based on a number of different categories, including accuracy of the waterfowl and habitat; composition; inclusion of any mandatory elements or published theme, and suitability to be made into a stamp.
“It’s hard to tell what the judges might be looking for because they change every year,” he said. “But anatomy, proper morphology of the bird, is always emphasized.”
After several weeks playing with different compositions, Black spent three solid weeks painting the pintail duck. “I worked from the time I got up in the morning until the time I went to bed,” he said. “It’s a pretty solid few weeks once I do get started on it.”
He shipped the painting to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service headquarters in Falls Church, Va., on Aug. 13, two days before the postmark deadline for entries. “I usually hang on to it right up until the required deadline,” he said. “I always leave time for small corrections, tweaks. Some years are more stressful than others. There have been some years where I felt like I screwed up something at the end and had a panic attack.”
This year’s panic attack didn’t come until after the painting was in the mail. That’s when Black realized he forgot to make a couple of changes he had planned on doing at the end: adding an iris to the pintail’s eyeball and fixing a line at the bottom of the duck’s bill.
“I had taken a photograph before I shipped it, and I looked at it on the computer, and all these little things kept coming back,” he said. “It was, ‘Oh no! I didn’t revisit the eyeball’ … I still don’t think my bird was perfect, but I suppose it was just enough that they didn’t dock me on that.”
Inspired by family, teachers — and the Hautmans
The duck stamp, which sells for $25, is required by all waterfowl hunters. Established in 1934, the program has raised more than $1.2 billion to conserve more than 6 million acres of habitat, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
Winners of the contest don’t earn a cash prize, but they keep the rights to their work and can sell it to collectors.
Many artists have gained critical acclaim with their entries, including Minnesota brothers Joe, Bob and Jim Hautman, who have won 15 times. Joe Hautman’s painting of three tundra swans flying over a wetland won the 2022 contest; it was his sixth winning entry.
The brothers were immortalized in the movie “Fargo,” when Marge Gunderson’s artist husband laments his poor chances of winning a duck stamp contest because “the Hautmans” have entered it, too.
Black’s love of the outdoors and wildlife started at a young age. His parents, Dennis and Kathy Black, took him and his older brother, Tom, on long camping and canoeing trips in Canada’s Quetico Provincial Park, north of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, twice a year.
“We’d canoe in for seven or eight days,” Black said. “It’s a profound and moving place to explore. That’s really where I grew my love for not just being outside, but really being in the backcountry and experiencing what it’s like to be out there for days on end. I just became addicted to it. Through the years, I’ve just tried to structure my life and utilize all the time that I have available to just keep me in and around the outdoors in any way. I really consider it to be where I find my peace.”
Dennis Black also took the boys hunting in North Dakota, and that’s where Chuck Black remembers seeing his first duck stamp. “As a kid, I was very interested in sketching and drawing,” he said. “That was around the time when the Hautman brothers started winning the contest, and they got a lot of notoriety. I would see their paintings at the art gallery at the St. Croix Mall. I’ll always remember that because I would get my hair cut at the place next door, and I’d get to go there afterwards. I remember walking in and it was always Terry Redlin and the Hautmans. I’ve been really obsessed with it since I was a little kid.”
Black, who graduated from Stillwater Area High School in 2005, credits his art teachers at Stillwater Middle School and the high school, especially Chris Windmiller and Sheila Elie, with helping ignite his interest in art.
“They were so encouraging,” he said. “I remember sitting in Mrs. Elie’s class and thinking, ‘Well, maybe I could pursue this’ because she and a lot of the other students were so supportive,” he said.
‘Stay true to what you love’
Black went to the University of North Dakota and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology. He worked at a number of jobs at the state and federal level, including at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in Fergus Falls, before moving to Montana in 2015.
He had worked a seasonal job with the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, and knew it would be a good place for him to pursue a full-time career in wildlife art.
“A big part of the decision in moving here was just the access,” he said. “There’s so much that you can do between Yellowstone and the Forest Service lands and the mountains.”
He and his wife, Erica, were married in 2022. The couple have a camper on their pickup truck and spend a lot of time outdoors doing research for his paintings.
“It’s vital to my growth as an artist,” he said. “But at the same time, I really do enjoy just taking in the moment and trying to really maximize my experience when I’m out, so sometimes … I’ll just go out with my cellphone and take pictures.”
Black said he stopped doing custom work a few years ago after he got to the point where he had enough people who wanted to purchase his art. “That was always the goal: To paint what I really wanted to paint. It took a long time, but I feel like I’m there now. It feels really great just to paint what’s on my mind.”
Much of Black’s latest work involves paintings depicting barns and cabins. “I’m interested in their relationship with the wild — how they pertain to the way we connect with the wild and how that intertwines,” he said.
Now that he’s a federal duck stamp winner, he reckons he’ll enter again sometime. “I definitely have the motivation to try entering again,” he said.
Dennis and Kathy Black say they are thrilled their son has achieved national recognition for his artwork.
“Like all parents, you worry about your children and their livelihood,” Dennis Black said. “With Charles, we never doubted his ability as an artist, but it’s not easy making a living in the art world. We’re proud of the fact that we never discouraged him from following his dreams and passion.”
Chuck Black said he is proud he stuck with creating the art that he loves.
“I got a lot of pushback in college art classes, but, really, when you’re doing something that you’re passionate about, other people can recognize that, and they can get behind it,” he said. “A lot of my own personal growth in art was just because I stuck with what I really loved and wanted to create around it.”
“Here’s my advice: Stay true to what you love,” he said. “It’s really easy to get influenced by outside opinions. As an artist, to have the perspective of what’s important to you, is really what creates your own unique voice, and that’s what draws people to liking certain artwork.”
