PBS Artist Bob Ross

Bob Ross has graced the small screen for decades. Mid afternoons on PBS channels could find Bob Ross, with his trademark afro, rolled sleeves and blue jeans that look as if they belong on a stock character bad guy from Simon and Simon or the A-Team – him clasping his oblong, semi- translucent palette, smeared with rich gobs of oil paints. Bob and palette hovering before an easel and a canvas – background a mysterious black. Floating, perhaps. It was as if the show were cast as a 1980’s Sears photo portrait.

But this photograph moved. With satisfying hisses and slaps, Ross would mingle and stir and blend those paints on his palette with a knife or a brush, narrating each step. “Thalo blue,” and “titanium white,” and “burnt umber,” and “yellow ochre,” became terms to be understood. Ross’ dulcet voice was perhaps the most memorable. A down home southern accent tinged with a patina of smoker’s huskiness. He would calmly guide viewers through the painting process, as “happy trees” would “live over there” – padding thick brushes in bristled hisses an entire grove of oaks would emerge along a near impossible hillside. A brush flattened to a fan shape culled a stand of pines. And another, crowned mountaintops with a daunting band of snow.

If a mistake were made, Ross called it a “happy accident,” would rattle a brush in a jar of turpentine at the base of the easel, and organically unfold the painting. An errant line became the wall of a small cabin clinging defiantly to the edge of a stream. A smudge: a small bush. He did all of this in under a half hour, pioneering the “wet on wet” method of oil painting, which drastically reduces production time, as only one drying period is required. Bob Ross made it look all too easy. Ross passed away in 1995, but his show remains syndicated on PBS stations across the country. A line of paints, painting supplies, and even a “Bob Ross” artist certification have emerged since his death. A generation or two of school aged kids have been soothed, home sick from school, by Bob Ross’ gentle demeanor.