Bob Ross
Robert Norman Ross was an American painter and art instructor who created and hosted The Joy of Painting, an instructional television program that aired from 1983 to 1994 on PBS in the United States and CBC in Canada.
Born in Daytona Beach, Florida, Ross joined the United States Air Force in 1961, rising to the rank of master sergeant. During his time at the military, he developed a passion for oil painting. He studied the art from Bill Alexander's show The Magic of Oil Painting, and eventually his income from painting outgrew his military salary. Retiring from the Air Force in 1981, he was discovered by Annette Kowalski, who had attended one of his sessions while he was working as a tutor. She and her husband helped Ross pool together money to set up a new company: Bob Ross Inc.
In 1982, a station aired his art class as a pilot, and several PBS stations signed up for The Joy of Painting soon after. One such station, WIPB, employed him to host the show in Muncie, Indiana beginning in 1983. The show features him instructing viewers on how to create landscape art using the quick, wet-on-wet oil painting technique with a limited palette. It ran until 1994, and Ross—a cigarette smoker who had severe health problems and expected to die prematurely—died a year later at the age of 52.
His legacy endures as an icon in popular culture, and rerun episodes of The Joy of Painting are still broadcast to this day. Although he intended to pass on his whole oeuvre to family members, the Kowalskis successfully contested this in court. Bob Ross Inc. later made a deal with his half-brother Jimmie Cox to become the legal proprietors of his name and likeness.
Early life
Ross was born in Daytona Beach, Florida, to Jack and Ollie Ross, a carpenter and a waitress respectively, and raised in Orlando, Florida. As an adolescent, Ross cared for injured animals, including armadillos, snakes, alligators and squirrels, one of which was later featured in several episodes of his television show. He had a half-brother Jim, whom he mentioned in passing on his show. Ross dropped out of high school in the 9th grade. While working as a carpenter with his father, he lost part of his left index finger, which did not affect his ability to later hold a palette while painting.Military career
In 1961, 18-year-old Ross enlisted in the United States Air Force and was put into service as a medical records technician. He rose to the rank of master sergeant and served as the first sergeant of the clinic at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, where he first saw the snow and mountains that later appear as recurring themes in his paintings. He developed his quick painting technique during brief daily work breaks. Having held military positions that required him to act tough and mean, "the guy who makes you scrub the latrine, the guy who makes you make your bed, the guy who screams at you for being late to work," Ross decided he would not raise his voice when he left the military.Career as a painter
During his 20-year Air Force career, Ross developed an interest in painting after attending an art class at the Anchorage U.S.O. club. He found himself frequently at odds with many of his painting instructors, who were more interested in abstract painting. Ross said, "They'd tell you what makes a tree, but they wouldn't tell you how to paint a tree."Ross was working as a part-time bartender when he discovered a TV show called The Magic of Oil Painting, hosted by German painter Bill Alexander. Alexander used a 16th-century painting style called wet-on-wet, widely known as "wet-on-wet", that allowed him to create a painting within thirty minutes. Ross studied and mastered the technique, began painting and then successfully selling Alaskan landscapes that he painted on novelty gold-mining pans. Eventually, Ross's income from sales surpassed his military salary. He retired from the Air Force in 1981 as a master sergeant.
He returned to Florida, studied painting with Alexander, joined his "Alexander Magic Art Supplies Company" and became a traveling salesman and tutor. Annette Kowalski, who had attended one of his sessions in Clearwater, Florida, convinced Ross he could succeed on his own. Ross, his wife, Kowalski and Walt, her husband, pooled their savings to create his company. The business struggled at first; his trademark permed hairstyle came about as a cost-cutting measure when his regular crew cut haircuts were becoming too expensive. Ross later confessed that he disliked the hairstyle, but did not feel he could change it because it was depicted in the company logo.
In 1982, a station in Falls Church, Virginia, aired a taping of his art class as a pilot, and 60 PBS stations signed up for the show in the first year. In 1983, PBS station WIPB lured him to Muncie, Indiana, with the promise of creative freedom, and he found a kinship with the staff. He moved home to Florida in 1989 but continued to travel to Muncie every three months to tape the show. Ross said he did the show for free and made his income from how-to books, videotapes and art supplies.
The show ran from January 11, 1983, to May 17, 1994, but reruns continue to appear in many broadcast areas and countries, including the non-commercial digital subchannel network Create and the streaming service Hulu. In the United Kingdom, the BBC re-ran episodes during the COVID-19 pandemic while most viewers were in lockdown at home.
During each half-hour segment, Ross instructed viewers in the quick, wet-on-wet oil painting technique, painting a scene without sketching it first, but creating the image directly from his imagination, in real time. He explained his limited paint palette, deconstructing the process into simple steps.
Artist and art critic Mira Schor compared Ross to Fred Rogers, host of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, noting that Ross's soft voice and the slow pace of his speech were similar.
With help from the Kowalskis, Ross used his television show to promote a line of art supplies and class recordings, building what would become a $15-million business—Bob Ross Inc.—which would ultimately expand to include classes taught by other artists trained in his methods. Following Ross's death, ownership of the company was passed to the Kowalskis.
Ross also filmed wildlife, squirrels in particular, usually in his garden, and he would often take in injured or abandoned squirrels and other animals.
Ross painted an estimated 30,000 paintings during his lifetime. Despite the unusually high supply of original paintings, Bob Ross original paintings are scarce on the art market, with sale prices of the paintings averaging in the thousands of dollars and frequently topping $10,000.
Bob Ross Inc. continues to own many of the works he painted for The Joy of Painting, as Ross himself was opposed to having his work turned into financial instruments. Previously, "A Walk in the Woods", Ross's first television painting, was sold in a pledge drive offering shortly after the first season aired; it is, as of September 2023, in the hands of Ryan Nelson, a Minnesota-based art dealer who acquired it from its original buyer and has been the primary dealer for the few Ross paintings that have reached the open art market. Nelson has placed an asking price of $9,850,000 for the sale of the painting and has indicated he has other plans for the painting if it does not sell for that price. In November 2025, Bonhams in Los Angeles will auction three of Ross' paintings, pledging the profits to public television stations that have been impacted by federal funding cuts.
In contrast to more traditionally famous artists, Ross's work, described by an art appraisal service as a cross between "fine art" and "entertainment memorabilia"—is most highly sought after by common fans of The Joy of Painting, as opposed to wealthy collectors. The artwork circulating among collectors is largely from Ross's work from before he launched the television show.
Technique
Ross used a wet-on-wet oil painting technique of painting over a thin base layer of wet paint. The painting could progress without first drying. The technique used a limited selection of tools and colors that did not require a large investment in expensive equipment. Ross frequently recommended odorless paint thinner for brush cleaning.Combining the wet-painting method with the use of large one- and two-inch brushes, as well as painting knives, allowed the painter to quickly complete a landscape scene.
Ross painted three versions of almost every painting featured on his show. The first was painted prior to taping and sat on an easel off-camera during filming, where Ross used it as a reference to create the second copy, which viewers actually watched him paint. After filming the episode, he painted a more detailed version for inclusion in his instructional books. The versions were each marked on the side or back of the canvas: "Kowalski" for the initial version, "tv" for the version painted during the TV show and "book" for the book version.
Influences
Ross dedicated the first episode of the second season of The Joy of Painting to Bill Alexander, explaining that "years ago, Bill taught me this fantastic technique, and I feel as though he gave me a precious gift, and I'd like to share that gift with you." As Ross's popularity grew, his relationship with Alexander became increasingly strained. "He betrayed me," Alexander told The New York Times in 1991. "I invented 'wet on wet', I trained him, and... he thinks he can do it better."Art historians have pointed out that the "wet-on-wet" technique actually originated in Flanders during the 15th century and was used by Frans Hals, Diego Velázquez, Caravaggio, Paul Cézanne, John Everett Millais, John Singer Sargent and Claude Monet, among many others.
Style
Ross was well known for phrases he tended to repeat while painting, such as "let's add some happy little trees".In most episodes, Ross would note that he enjoyed cleaning his paint brush. He was fond of drying off a brush dipped in odorless thinner by striking it against the can of thinner, then striking it against a box and a trash can. Occasionally, he would strike the brush hard on the trash can, saying he "hit the bucket" and then on the easel. He would smile and often laugh aloud as he said to "beat the Devil out of it". He also used a lightly sanded palette to avoid reflections from the studio lighting.
In every show, Ross wore jeans and a plain light-colored shirt, which he believed would be a timeless look, and spoke as if addressing one viewer.
When asked about his relaxed and calm approach, he said, "I got a letter from somebody here a while back, and they said, 'Bob, everything in your world seems to be happy.' That's for sure. That's why I paint. It's because I can create the kind of world that I want, and I can make this world as happy as I want it. Shoot, if you want bad stuff, watch the news."
The landscapes he painted, typically mountains, lakes, snow and log cabin scenes, were inspired by his years in Alaska, where he was stationed for the majority of his Air Force career. He repeatedly said everyone has inherent artistic talent and could become an accomplished artist given time, practice and encouragement. Ross would say, "we don't make mistakes; we just have happy accidents."
In 2014, the blog FiveThirtyEight analysed 381 episodes in which Ross painted live, concluding that 91% of Ross's paintings contained at least one tree, 44% included clouds, 39% included mountains and 34% included mountain lakes. By his own estimation, Ross completed more than thirty thousand paintings. His work rarely contained human subjects or signs of human life. On rare occasions, he would incorporate a cabin, sometimes with a chimney but without smoke, and possibly unoccupied. Far more frequently, he would refer to animals that may inhabit the scenes he was painting, such as the cow in a barn or birds that may live in the trees, and encouraged viewers to devise their own stories in their head about the scenes he created.