Robert E. Bear, a master painter and special education teacher for the Lampasas Independent School District, has been recognized in “Who’s Who in America,” “Who’s Who in American Education,” “National Honor Society Outstanding American Teachers” and the “President’s Who’s Who Among Business and Professional Achievers.”

Bear has been drawing and painting nature art since he was a teen growing up in Redwood Falls, Minn.

As a practicing artist, Bear has been active in a number of group and one-man shows. He has received best of show and people’s choice selections in national juried competitions, and in 1986, the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum extended a scholarship to study with world-renowned artist/ naturalist Robert Bateman.

Bear’s paintings are in private collections in Germany, Japan, Alaska and across the U.S.

He recently produced the S.A.I.L. program as art intervention lessons to help troubled youth achieve success. He created the Star Poster Program to help teach youth how to create posters in light of social responsibility and the Coolality Kid characters while he was an art specialist at the Bryan Academy for Visual Performing Arts in the Bryan Independent School District.

At the same time, Bear was a doctoral student in the department of curriculum and instruction at Texas A&M University.

He holds a master’s degree in studio art from Texas A&M and a bachelor of science degree in art education from Bermidji State University.

Bear is a graduate of the Art Instruction Schools of Minneapolis.

He has taught school for more than 20 years, including special education and photography.

For more than two years, Bear was an exhibit specialist for the John E. Conner Museum in Kingsville, was a supervisor of a graphic art department for the U.S. Air Force in Grand Forks, N.D., and art director of a print shop in Lubbock, and an education services specialist for the 123rd Army Reserve Command in Indianapolis, Ind.

In 2008, he and his wife, Joan, also an art teacher, co-founded Bear Art School in Lampasas.

The artist also has created the game of Gig’l and the team sport Bearball.