Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
Don Ross thinks you can paint.
He’s proof of it. The work of about 130 elementary students at Holley School, and more at other local schools, is proof of it.
Ross, 62, in Sweet Home has been painting only since 2003, after he learned how so he could teach classes for his employer.
For approximately three years, he has owned and operated Don Ross Art Studio at 1252 Main St., where his wife Angela operates Homefront Hair Design.
He provides demonstrations and classes as well as selling his own work.
“Probably the last year, I’ve focused on the schools and the community in Sweet Home,” he said, especially the grade schools.
The experience recently at Holley “was awesome,” he said. “It just touches the hearts of grandparents, parents and kids themselves to see what they could do. Anybody can paint.”
He stumbled onto painting initially while attending a show in California to review and buy art supplies for High School Pharmacy, where he supervised 38 stores, including four Ben Franklin craft stores.
Ross grew up in Missouri. He served in Vietnam from 1963 to 1968 aboard the aircraft carriers USS Forrestal and USS Oriskany. He worked on tanker, photography and fighter crews.
He returned to Missouri after his service, and his sister introduced him to the manager of P.M. Place, a major variety store in the area. The manager sent him to the company headquarters, where he was tested and hired the same day. He managed a store in Madison, Iowa, for seven years
He met his wife when he visited Whidbey Island, Wash., while in the Navy. He married Angela immediately after exiting the service, and they had three sons by the time they left Iowa. She came from a family of 13 in the Seattle area, and they decided to move closer.
Ross went to work as a store manager for Sprouse Reitz in Kent. The company eventually moved him to Sweet Home where he later became a district manager. After Sprouse Reitz shut down, he went to work for Ben Franklin, opening stores throughout 12 western states. He went to work for High School Pharmacy after Ben Franklin shut down. After High School Pharmacy sold, about three years ago, he returned to Sweet Home.
While he was a store manager, Ross ran across an Alexander Art seminar, which teaches the wet-on-wet technique popularized by the late television painter Bill Alexander. During the seminar, he completed his first painting in an hour.
“We did a painting, and the girl came up to me and said that was awesome,” he said. “I got excited.”
After an in-store instructor inherited some money and quit, Ross suddenly had to get serious about art. He bought an Alexander Art book and completed seven paintings.
“I didn’t have anybody to do it,” he said, and his eighth painting was in front of customers taking the class.
After losing his job with High School Pharmacy, he decided it was time to go back to Sweet Home.
“We were blessed that we still had this little business in town.”
He had managed the Sweet Home Sprouse Reitz store for about four years and then was district manager. After Sprouse Reitz closed, his wife, Angie, commuted from Washougal, near Vancouver, for about 11 years to keep Homefront open.
“That’s how we ended up back in Sweet Home,” Ross said. He told his wife he would really like to open an art shop.
“People said, there’s no way you go into Sweet Home and pull it off,” he said, but he’s stayed busy for three years. School District 55 has helped with that.
“I always loved working with kids,” Ross said. He figured it might help to get into schools and do painting demonstrations. He started as a sub for whatever the district needs, and on his own he started doing 30-minute demonstrations with 30-minute question-and-answer sessions.
The district was positive about the demonstrations, he said, “so we started doing some classes.”
That started providing some income as well through the artist-in-residence programs, and the parent-teacher clubs have been big supporters.
He did a project with a creative painting seminar in Las Vegas last year and is on tap to do three at this year’s seminar. He has taught classes at the coast and at the Michael’s craft store in Salem. He’s done one-on-one work with families and worked at family reunions and birthday parties.
“People are so excited about it,” he said. He received a call from the instructor of a woman who took one of his classes in Depoe Bay, requesting he contract to teach a week-long class of 25 in California where the woman lives.
What Ross teaches isn’t complicated, he said. He uses the same wet-on-wet technique used by Alexander.
“The first thing I tell people, if you’re looking at a photo and you want to reproduce that photo, you can do that, but you’ve got to do it (with a camera).”
Rather, he encourages aspiring painters not to be frustrated with instructors who tell them their color values are too dark or too light. He encourages them to keep their own style.
A painting might come out darker in the end, but “that’s your style,” Ross said. “It’s all about support, and it’s your expression of yourself on canvas.”
When youngsters finish paintings, and the grandparents want to hang onto those paintings, “there’s no feeling like it,” he said. “It’s awesome. I love it. That’s what it’s all about – the thrill of it, the painting, the sharing of it. It’s awesome to touch a life from a paintbrush when you’ve got no experience.”
If two or three kids latch onto it, and it keeps them off the street and out of trouble, that’s even better, he said.
Ross most enjoys painting landscapes, but lately, he’s been doing more floral paintings. He also wants to paint buggies and wagons, he said.
His ultimate goal: “I want to be on the tube.”