Pittman’s painting is featured on 2022-2023 Trout Stamp
TINA L. SCOTT
EDITOR
Bill Pittman’s artwork appears on the cover of The Guide to Wisconsin Trout Fishing Regulations, 2022-2023, which contains the regulations for Wisconsin trout seasons, including the inland waters catch and release and the extended Lake Superior tributaries seasons, and the official Trout Stamp for 2022-2023.
The local artist, who has been passionate about art, fishing, and wildlife since childhood, learned about an art contest last summer when he was at Jokin’ Joe’s Bait Shop “on the island,” as Pittman likes to call it, between the Sixth Ward bridges, just a short walk away, and he was encouraged to enter.
The contest itself was “a cooperative effort between the State of Wisconsin DNR and Trout Unlimited Wisconsin,” Pittman said. “They [the DNR] sponsor the competition for Trout Unlimited’s Artist of the Year … Trout Unlimited has a Committee that judges the artwork that’s submitted.”
In years past, sportsmen who purchased a stamp to hunt or fish for a particular species would receive a physical stamp that indicated they were licensed to harvest that particular fish, animal, or fowl. These days, purchase of fish and game licenses, and specific “stamps” designating those licenses, are simply electronic notations on an individual’s DNR licensing record. Sportsmen and women no longer carry a physical stamp, license, or even a back tag when hunting [deer]. They need only carry their Wisconsin driver’s license or ID so their licensing information can be matched up with their records if questioned.
Now the stamps are basically a collector’s stamp, Pittman explained, with framed copies of the art and the stamp auctioned off at Trout Unlimited Chapter Banquets around the state as a fundraiser. Actual stamps are sold for $10 each as a collector’s piece, and the proceeds from those sales are used to enhance the trout program in the state, he added
Pittman entered an acrylic painting of a trout, which won the top honors, and his image is now synonymous with the 2022-2023 Trout Stamp.
Pittman said he has previously entered water fowl images in contests, and he’s been a finalist in a number of those, and he was also a finalist for Wisconsin Wildlife Artist of the Year, but this one was, in his words, “pretty cool, because I won!”
“With research and all that – the research was a big thing,” Pittman said, it took him “probably 35-40 hours” to complete the painting. He used a mount he has – of the last trout his dad ever caught – as one of his points of reference for the painting. He submitted his entry in early fall 2021 and was notified he had won in late fall 2021.
“I haven’t really been doing [painting] fish until the last 8 or 10 years,” Pittman said. “Prior to that it was all water fowl.”
Originally from Minneapolis, Pittman “spent tons and tons of time in Minnesota hunting and fishing, because we had a cabin in northern Minnesota, so as a kid I was in tune to wildlife and fish,” he said. His passion naturally extended to creating wildlife art beginning in middle school and became a lifelong pursuit. “My aunt was an amateur artist, as such, in northern Minnesota and she was very influential,” he added.
Initially, though, art was a passionate pastime for Pittman, who was an avid baseball player who succeeded in achieving his dream of making it to the pros. But his professional baseball career didn’t last as long as he had hoped. Pittman played professionally as a pitcher for the Minnesota Twins for two full seasons, but injured his shoulder at the end of the second season. “I kind of toughed it out and wasn’t very successful, and then the third year I just couldn’t do it,” he said. He was 21 years old.
“When I think about it realistically, actually it was a blessing in disguise,” Pittman said. “I didn’t think so at the time. But it was. I had a great career teaching, and guidance and counseling was really good … and I’ve been retired for some time now.”
Pittman is referring to the fact that after his injury took him out of professional baseball, “Then I really focused on education.”
He went to Augsburg University in Minneapolis, where he met his wife, and he now has degrees in Education, Art Education, Health and Physical Education, and a Masters in Guidance and Counseling. He also focused on his art. In addition to painting, “In college, I did a lot of pottery and I was pretty successful with that, and that was something I was really interested in,” Pittman said. “I taught it, and I enjoyed teaching pottery classes. I enjoy teaching all of it, but three-dimensional work is something I [really] enjoy.”
During his time in Minneapolis, he also had the opportunity to meet and work with award-winning artist Les Kouba, an artist who became famous for his paintings of wildlife, ducks, and deer. “He was somewhat of a mentor for me, which was cool,” Pittman said.
Pittman himself began showing his work in galleries in Minneapolis.
After graduation, he taught middle school and high school art classes for three years in Platteville and also had a working relationship with the college there.
In 1970, Pittman and his wife moved to Merrill where he took a teaching job at Lincoln Hills School. There, with it “being such a multifaceted type of teaching experience and environment,” he taught a wider range of subjects, from physical education to art to some academics. He taught there until his retirement in 2000.
During his teaching years, when he and his wife, Carolyn, were raising their two daughters, Pittman remembers painting after the girls were asleep and in bed.
His work has been shown in galleries in Minnesota, Illinois, and especially throughout northern Wisconsin through the years, he said. And now, he doesn’t have to worry about staying up late to paint.
At age 78, he and Caroline are long since retired [she also retired in 2000 from 30 years of teaching at MAPS], their kids are grown, and they are grandparents.
These days he spends his time in his deer stand, cutting wood, caring for his yard, duck hunting, and painting whenever the spirit moves him.