Disney artist creates huge hero paintings for Aroostook students

DYER BROOK, Maine — In a mesmerizing flurry of paint, music, video and performance, a Massachusetts-based Disney artist showed students at Southern Aroostook Community School in Dyer Brook on Wednesday how they can change the world.  
“Hi, amazing people, my name is Rob and this show is filled with magic, real magic, magic that can change your life, I promise,” said a paint-covered Rob Surette as the show opened.  
With a series of brush strokes, jumps and hand tossed paint splatters, Surette transformed 6-foot-tall black canvases into vibrant portraits of Abraham Lincoln, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King and Albert Einstein, each recognizable in seconds.
He talked to students as he painted about celebrating their super powers like imagination, kindness, opening your heart to others, and scientific exploration.
As the crowd of high school students cheered, Surette kept painting. He stood next to a large video screen playing a music video featuring images of historical, inspiring and challenging times interspersed with Martin Luther King’s I have a dream speech, images of Rosa Parks riding the bus, kids bringing water to a person without a home, scientific inventions like flying cars and glasses made from recycled ocean plastic.
Surette’s Be Somebody, 60-minute speed painting presentation, with a focus on art, is a new educational approach for the district. Officials said they hope Surette’s personal artistic journey, spurred by a third grade teacher, will engage and inspire students.
“We chose Rob in the hopes that he can share his story to reinforce important life skills and inspire our students to reach their full potential,” said RSU 50 Superintendent and high school principal Jon Porter. “We feel his incredible artistic skills will engage our students and create a memorable and uplifting experience.”
While working full-time as a Disney fine artist drawing elaborate original paintings of Disney characters or enchanted scenes, the 53-year-old has also presented his, Be Somebody, show more than 4,000 times to schools around the country. He’s performed at homeless shelters, on the Today Show, Oprah, and The Jay Leno Show to name a few.
During such deeply divided times, Surette said he wants to be like a lighthouse in a dark sky. And he likes that his performances are universal and not political and that it is a dark environment with paint flying everywhere.
“Out of the darkness and all the mess, hopefully comes a masterpiece,” he said. “It’s a nice metaphor. Life can be so hard and dark and there is always light and hope. Humans are powerful. Humans are resilient.”
About midway through the show, Surette told students that dreams can come true and shared his own dream tale.
In third grade his teacher asked the students to write down what they dreamed of becoming and Surette wrote that he wanted to be a Disney artist even though he said he was just an average kid.
“One teacher can change your life,” he said, asking students to think of people in their own lives who believe in them,who encourage them to follow their dreams.
He shared his drawings since he was 3.
“You can see, I was not born talented,” he said. “My drawings were average. I practiced and totally noticed I got better. The key is you can’t quit. The process was slow, but every year I got better so I never quit. ”
The images improved year after year until his most recent elaborate disney painting of Mickey Mouse. A print of that painting, titled “Arriving at the Ball,” sold for $25,000 and two originals sold for $60,000 each and took five years to complete.
“I never went to art school, I just taught myself. I just kept working at it,” he said. “Then I started to get crazy good. Find things you love, pour your heart and soul into them. Practice, believe in yourself and never give up.”
For eighth-grader Shawn Grass, who also likes art, Surette’s artistic development was his favorite part of the show.
“He inspired me,” he said. “It was cool.”
Eighth-grader Giavanna Early had a similar reaction.
“Watching him over the years inspires me,” she said, adding that art is a hobby for her. “It was pretty great and I liked the focus on art.”
During the presentation, Surette said he wants to grab as much as he can out of the world that is good and celebrate it, but still talk about the challenges and that the world is not perfect. Following video images of kids helping people who live on the streets, he talked about kindness while painting a portrait of Mother Teresa.
“Did you see all the kindness, all the people with big hearts, all the people who think of more than just themselves,” he asked. “It was a celebration of the human heart and you make that your superpower. You can change the world with your big heart.”
Surette said he talks about challenges because he does not want the students to think the world is all rainbows. But he keeps coming back to positivity.
He shows the students scientific inventions then the science of their own cells and how they can push their own energy.
“Einstein changed the world with his brain. We have brains. Maybe we can change the world,” Surette said after painting Einstein. “People are using their brains in a powerful way sometimes to solve global issues like pollution in the ocean.”
It’s not really even about who he is painting, he said, adding that his performances are about giving the kids something to take with them, to remember.
“I feel like a lot of entertainment is great, but it is just empty calories. It is just entertainment. But I don’t want to do that,” Surette said. “I do a speed painting show, but I’m here to fill their hearts and souls.”