Colette Dahl Lorentzen, multimedia artist, author and illustrator from Clear Lake, is the 2025 Iowa Ducks Unlimited “Stamp of the Year” winner. Lorentzen said she is inspired by nature and wildlife and focuses strongly on realism in her art.
Lorentzen said she started drawing at the age of five and was soon accurately drawing her favorite cartoon characters. Over the years she has built up her skill set through some college classes, and many more on-line. But most of her ability has been self-taught through diligent practicing.
She works with all mediums – acrylics, watercolor, pastels, airbrush – but in her early 50s she said she started concentrating on colored pencils as she created the illustrations for her children’s books. The illustrations were based around a character she created from her cartooning days.
Finally getting a little more serious about her artistic work, Lorentzen said she got her business permit 10 years ago and was promoting her books and selling some of her nature prints at last year’s Harvest Fest when she happened to meet Paul Lopez, owner of a duck decoy business on North Shore in Clear Lake. He also happens to attend many of the Ducks Unlimited (DU) shows and events around the country. Lopez had seen some of her other work and told her he could help promote her work through his many DU contacts and that started her down the Duck Stamp path.
“I have several local photographers here that let me use their work,” said Lorentzen, who then recreates the photos into pieces of art using acrylics or colored pencils. For the recent Duck Stamp competition she chose two photos taken by Stan Rick. She said she purposely entered one of her colored pencil works into the Duck Print of the Year competition with plans to donate the smaller second picture to the DU. “They [the judges] said this was probably the first colored pencil they’d ever seen in the contest. They usually see acrylic or oil,” Lorentzen commented.
Before she donated her smaller piece, one of the DU show attendants asked her, “Are you sure you don’t want to enter that in the Duck Stamp contest,” Lorentzen said. He told her that as long as she had never entered it into any other competition she could enter it here. “So I won by half a point. It actually went into another extra round because there was a tie…”
Even though her Duck Print of the Year entry didn’t win, it did go through three rounds of judging. “So I was happy,” said Lorentzen, who now knows exactly what the judges are looking for. But her second entry, the one intended to be a donation, “It was such a big surprise to win the one down in Des Moines, that Iowa Duck Stamp, I was just ecstatic,” she said.
On a positive note, since her larger entry didn’t win, Lorentzen said she is free to make her own prints. She said she framed one print and gave it to Paul Lopez, who is going to Pennsylvania, one of the largest DU events in the country. Her print, along with a small picture and write-up of the Iowa DU Stamp of the Year, will be donated, “So it’ll get my name out there a little farther,” Lorentzen said.
Lorentzen said she now has plans to enter the federal competition after running into, and receiving encouragement, from the Clear Lake niece of Maynard Reece, winner of the Federal Duck Stamp for several years running.
To see some of Lorentzen’s work, visit the Clear Lake Arts Center, where she is currently the featured Artist of the Month
