My love of art started at an early age. Hearing stories written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter is one of my fond memories from my childhood.
When I was little, Dad got my siblings and I little boxed sets of her stories at the gas station!  These stories introduced me to watercolors and the imaginative things you could do with art.  Helen Beatrix Potter was born in Kensington, England in the later half of the 19th century. She didn't go to school she was educated by her governesses.   Beatrix and her brother Bertram were naturalist at heart who liked to explore their surroundings, collecting various things from the outdoors to draw and paint.  They had several small pets to draw inspiration from as well, that included: Mice, hedgehog, bats and of course rabbits! Her early years inspired her stories that would ultimately make her famous.  Aside from art she was also a conservationist and prize winning animal breeder. At the age of 47 she married William Heelis, they were happily married for 30 years 'till her death in 1943. 

Most famous for his paintings and pastel drawings of ballet dancers (of which is numbered at about 1500 pieces) Edgar Degas' passion was showing modern living in unusual and interesting new ways.  He liked to play with compositions, family portraits showed personality and emotion rather than static poses of  the subjects sitting looking forward.  Degas' paintings borrowed from Japanese prints cutting off (framing) his subjects in unusual ways, in doing this he worked at making the viewer feel like they were in the midst of the action.  He was known to paint his friends in his pieces.  In the painting called The Orchestra at the Opera, the main musician is a friend and really played the bassoon although a number of other friends are in the painting as well, depicted with instruments but they really didn't play! Degas wanted his paintings to look spontaneous and done quickly but actually he worked out his pieces with a lot of preliminary, detailed sketches and executed them  in his studio.  I learned these things from a book called "What Makes A Degas A Degas" written by Richard Muhlberger.

Claude Monet was a 19th century Impressionist and is most famous for paintings he did of his own  lily ponds.  He led the artistic movement of French Impressionism, his painting "Impression, Soleil Levant" (Impression Sunrise -painted in 1872) is where the term for these artists' style comes from.  Monet painted with oils and did his paintings very quickly (he also worked with pastel).  He always preferred to paint out of doors (plein air) regardless of the weather.  Towards the end of his life he painted inside in a giant green house like addition to his house, thus giving the same effect of painting outside.  Claude Monet's sight worsened later in life. He developed cataracts that affected his vision and the perceived color that he saw, this in turn caused the paintings he did at this time to have a red cast to them.  After having two surgeries to remove his cataracts, he went back over those paintings to correct the color.  Interestingly Monet also did multiple versions of his paintings, if one wasn't successful in being juried he would paint another version to submit in the future.  I think he wanted to capture the intricate changes of light in his pieces. One of the scenes he did of poppies, he painted 3 canvases (that were set up side by side) consecutively to show the change of light on the same scene.

Bob Ross is a modern icon for oil painters.  He specialized in scenic paintings; a lot of which was purely from his imagination. He was born and raised in Florida however after joining the US Air Force he lived in Alaska for several years.  These years spent in the mountains greatly influenced his paintings.  Bob Ross' artwork has inspired thousands if not millions of people.  He certainly inspired me when I was growing up and watching his series on PBS called "The Joy of Painting".  I have fond memories of my family watching his shows together, trying to copy his style with his "happy clouds" and "happy trees".  Ross is remembered for his saying "We don't make mistakes, just happy little accidents."   When talking about his career in art, he said, "I started painting when I was little.  I didn't know I had any talent.  I believe talent is just a pursued interest.  Anybody can do what I do." Some of the pieces I've painted I've done from my imagination as well, although I know I haven't done anywhere near as many as he estimated in his life, 30,000!