Locals Inspiration

RT Lovato sees beauty worth preserving in the simple moments of daily Winter Garden life.

By day, RT Lovato is a Disney stuntman at Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular. But when he’s not flying high behind the scenes, he’s in a quiet corner of town, filling a sketchbook with handpainted scenes.

Local painter RT Lovato

“I love doing small-scale ink work, and I love the portability of sketchbooks,” Lovato says of his work. “It can be hard to make time for, but I find it calming and therapeutic when I do.”

His art seems to bring as much joy to others as it does to him. He recalls a young woman approaching him while he was sketching at Axum. “She says, ‘I just wanted to tell you that seeing you sketch here makes me so happy.’ And she hands me this $5 bill and says, ‘I want your next coffee to be on me.’ And she walks off.”

Though he didn’t get a chance to talk with her, Lovato’s gut feeling is that she’s an artist herself, and was drawn to another creative. “You always hear that people are on their phones so often because it’s a dopamine hit for them. In a way, completing art, and going back to see what I accomplished, I get that same feeling.”