Since a very young age, Robert E. Bear has been interested in wildlife and nature, in what could be a case of nominative determinism, which theorizes that one’s name can have an impact on their career, personality, or character. This was further reinforced by his experience exploring the woods and rivers with his cousins, who are of Native American descent, at the Lower Sioux Indian Community in Minnesota. At the age of 12, Bear took up painting, primarily focusing on wildlife, as a way to immortalize the beautiful creatures he saw.
Bear also credits his father, who was a silhouette artist, for awakening his interest in art and becoming his first art teacher. Despite his father tragically dying when Bear was eight years old, his interest in art never waned.
“I would get in trouble in school because I spent most of my time drawing instead of studying,” Bear says. “Even before I graduated from high school, my mother signed me up for a correspondence course in commercial art and illustration. I completed that course before I went to the Army. After my military service, I went to college to study for a bachelor’s and master’s in art, then became an art teacher.”
With a teaching career spanning more than three decades, most of which was spent teaching art, Bear has received multiple awards, including Who’s Who In American Education (1994/95), Who’s Who In America (2000), and National Honor Society Outstanding Teacher (2005).
Bear also worked as a museum exhibit specialist, and it led to him receiving a scholarship to study under Robert Bateman, who is one of the most famous wildlife painters in the world. Over the years, Bear created an impressive collection of wildlife paintings, featuring subjects such as mammals, birds, and insects in their natural habitats. The paintings range in size from 6″x9″ to 52″x84″. These paintings were done in a variety of mediums: oil, acrylic, gouache, and acrylic with gouache, and painted on mounted rag paper, canvas, or gessoed masonite. Most of these paintings are for sale, and Bear is open to inquiries from interested buyers.
Bear shares that he named his business Cave Bear LLC after a DNA test revealed that he had a significant amount of Neanderthal genes. Neanderthals were responsible for some of the earliest cave art, and Bear is continuing their legacy by creating depictions of nature. According to Bear, he is inspired to paint by the beauty of God’s creations, so he loves spending time outdoors in nature, soaking in the scenery, and envisioning his next project. He also came up with an acronym for art, which stands for “Aesthetic Rendering of Thought”.
“This definition of art applies to an extremely wide range of pursuits, such as painting, photography, cooking, music, and many more,” he says. “If you can come up with an idea (thought), put it in a form (rendering) that can be appreciated in a pleasing way (aesthetic) by one or more of the five senses, then that’s art.”
