Walleye stamp contest win boosts profile of Bemidji wildlife artist
Oct. 13—BEMIDJI — Whether he's fishing, hunting or carrying a camera, Sam Larsen, it could be said, has a keen eye for the natural world and painting it.
Product development manager for Northland Fishing Tackle in Bemidji, Larsen, 30, is making a name for himself in the competitive world of wildlife art. A graphic artist by training, the 2016 graduate of Bemidji State University won the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources' 2024 walleye stamp contest in August and in September placed third in the DNR's 2025 turkey stamp contest.
Larsen's acrylic painting of a walleye about to gobble a
Northland Tackle Fire-Ball Jig
and shiner minnow was judged the best of 11 entries in the virtual competition and will adorn the 2024 Minnesota walleye stamp.
Incorporating the watermelon-colored Fire-Ball Jig — a walleye industry icon — into the painting was a classic case of art imitating life, one might say.
"I kind of knew that would be kind of a little nugget in the painting that would draw some people's attention," Larsen said. "It's a jig we've made that hundreds of people have caught walleyes on, so it was really cool to be able to incorporate that."
Larsen placed third in his first turkey stamp contest in 2018, second in 2022 and third in the recent contest for the 2025 turkey stamp. After failing to place in his first walleye stamp contest in 2019, the second time proved to be a charm; it was Larsen's first stamp contest win.
"I was almost kind of speechless," he said. "I knew I had a really good shot with this entry of my walleye, but I never thought I'd be able to progress that fast, and I'm really proud of accomplishing that. And then, I'm also really excited that it happened for the walleye (contest), too, just because I love hunting, but I really love fishing.
"I work at Northland, I'm fishing all the time, it was my first love of the outdoors, so it was kind of cool to have the walleye as my first (contest win)."
Larsen, who grew up in St. Cloud, Minnesota, says his artistic flair comes from his dad's side of the family.
"He taught me at a young age, if it's made out of wood, I can build it cheaper and better than you can buy it," Larsen said. "But then also, my grandma's pretty artistic, and when we were young, she'd watch me and my brother, and we'd go over to her house and paint Christmas gifts and things for people.
"But I also just had a knack for art and really enjoyed it."
As a high school student at St. Cloud Cathedral, Larsen entered some of his paintings in a statewide fine arts competition at the encouragement of Tony Keller, an influential art teacher who died in December 2022.
Larsen's paintings did well in the high school competitions, he recalls, and then as now, wildlife was the focus.
"I always enjoyed painting something (related to) the outdoors," Larsen said. "My dad always took us fishing when we were younger, but I didn't come from a hunting family at all. But I always liked being outside, and he did a lot of camping and took us camping and whatnot."
Watching outdoors TV shows and reading hunting magazines, Larsen recalls, fed his interest in imagining scenes of deer and turkeys in the woods or ducks in flight.
"Then as I got older, I got more and more into hunting, and I do it all the time," he said.
Realism is the key to success in
DNR stamp contests,
Larsen says, whether it's pheasants, trout/salmon, turkeys, walleyes or waterfowl. Larsen photographs the fish and wildlife he paints and uses the photos for reference. He'll spend "a lot of time" getting the reference photo just right in Photoshop, whether it's adding background elements or positioning the fish or bird.
"It's been a big learning curve," Larsen said. "One thing about wildlife art is, it's painting the scene, but it's not necessarily painting from your imagination. It's getting the colors and the shadows and the light perfect ... and getting everything from the reference photo to line up right."
Working within the confines of a 6 1/2 - by 9-inch painting surface — the size requirement for the DNR stamp contests — adds to the challenge. Larson says he has 40 to 60 hours invested in each of his stamp contest entries.
"Don't paint what you think it looks like, paint exactly what the photo is telling you," Larsen said. "And the more you learn that, the more you'll learn how to take that and manipulate it to make it artistic — learning how the shadows work and how light works is huge.
"When the average person looks at it, it just clicks that it looks real."
Because he has a full-time job and is also a full-time husband and recreational fisherman, Larsen does most of his painting in the winter, preferring to spend his time in the summer fishing or helping his wife, Mandy, with her flower garden.
"Even on a weeknight in winter, you can't go ice fishing because by the time we're walking out the door up north where we are, it's dark," he said. "It's nice to be able to (paint) and still be thinking about catching walleyes on Fire-Ball Jigs, even though there's 30 inches of ice out there."
Winning the walleye stamp contest was rewarding, both for name recognition and for potential sale of prints — which sell for $100 unframed or $200 to $250 framed, depending on the version — Larsen says, but he doesn't consider himself a competitive person.
It's the same mindset, he says, whether painting or fishing local bass tournaments.
"I kind of envy some of those people that have that personality because they do great things with it, whereas I compete against myself," Larsen said. "So, I kind of go out there and I want to make the best piece I can and I do that. And then, the competition aspect of it reassures me that I did that or tells me I need to work a little bit harder for the next time."
Larsen can't enter the DNR walleye stamp competition next year because contest rules prohibit artists from entering the year after a win. He does plan to enter the DNR turkey, pheasant, trout/salmon and duck stamp contests and may someday enter the
Federal Duck Stamp contest,
the biggest competition of all with a history of wins by Minnesota artists.
Montana artist Chuck Black, a UND graduate originally from Stillwater, Minnesota,
won the
2023 Federal Duck Stamp Art Contest,
which will be made into the 2024-2025 Duck Stamp.
Becoming a full-time wildlife artist isn't in his plans, though, Larsen says.
"It's a tough, tough market out there," he said. "There's that term, 'starving artists,' but also, I absolutely love what I'm doing now, so it would be very hard to leave that. I've worked hard to get that Northland job and I love what I'm doing there.
"I get to think about fishing all the time, so it's pretty hard to beat that."
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