In his youth, Richard Clifton woke up before dawn to go duck hunting in the marshes of Delaware. Sometimes a mallard flew overhead, a silhouette in the dark with the wind whistling through its feathers. Now one of his paintings has entangled him in a controversy in one of the nation’s top competitions for duck painters: the Federal Duck Stamp Contest. Some artists said it interfered with the independence of their vision, or required them to incorporate the “litter” of spent casings. Last month, Friends of Animals, a rights group, filed a lawsuit in Connecticut district court seeking to have the rule removed.

Source: New York Times October 13, 2020 12:33 UTC