Twenty-six years ago, Maryland farmer Robert Bealle finished second in the Federal Duck Stamp art contest, when his painting of redheads lost to a pair of American wigeons. This year, he won by painting a wigeon himself.
Bealle beat entries from 223 other wildlife artists from across the country Saturday to win the 2010-2011 Federal Duck Stamp contest held at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Refuge.
His oil-on-Masonite painting of the colorful waterfowl will be on the $15 stamp, which is purchased by migratory bird hunters and collectors. Since the stamp's creation in 1934, its revenue has allowed the federal government to purchase more than 6 million acres of wetland habitat. In the Chesapeake Bay watershed, Duck Stamp money has been used to acquire more than 31,000 acres on 15 national wildlife refuges.
"I've had a gorilla on my back for 26 years," said Bealle, 57, as an audience of federal officials and artists applauded. "I've been top 20 so many times. ... I felt this year if I didn't win it, I was never going to win it."
Winners receive a pane of stamps carrying their design. But they can sell prints of their work, which are prized by hunters, art collectors and conservationists.
Bealle, a former taxidermist with a family farm in Waldorf, is a three-time winner of the Maryland Migratory Game Stamp competition, most recently in 2008-2009.
Five judges, including former Maryland congressman Wayne Gilchrest and Judith Price, executive director of the annual Waterfowl Festival in Easton, spent two days examining and scoring the artists' works. After three rounds of judging, two paintings were tied. Contest organizers held the two paintings side by side as the judges gave them one more inspection.
Bealle snapped the photo that he painted from in 1983 - the year he finished second - at the National Zoo in Washington.
When the contest rules were released, he noticed that the wigeon was on the list of eligible species (along with the wood duck, the blue-winged teal, the cinnamon teal and the gadwall). He chose the wigeon, he said, because, "I wanted to paint something that there wouldn't be too many of."
