Many of us still remember the opening of The Joy of Painting with the voice of Bob Ross after school or on lazy Saturday mornings.
Born in 1942 in Daytona Beach, Florida. After completing one year of high school, Ross worked for a while as a carpenter with his father. At age 18, he joined the United States Air Force, where he took his first painting class at a United Service Organizations club in the early 1960s.
After discovering his passion, he started practicing and learned his famous technique, the wet-on-wet (alla prima) oil painting, from television painting instructor Bill Alexander, whose show, The Magic of Oil Painting, aired on PBS from 1974 to 1982.
Ross painted while serving in the military and sold paintings of the Alaskan landscape to tourists.
In 1981, he retired from the military and took private painting lessons with Alexander, eventually taking his place on PBS in The Joy of Painting, which premiered in 1983 and ran for 11 years.
Beside his soothing voice, Ross amazed viewers with his effortless painting method and detailed landscapes during the show’s 30 minutes with a house painting brush and a palette knife, while also chatting and offering words of encouragement and other memorable phrases such as “happy little trees” and “happy little accidents”
In a 1988 episode of The Joy of Painting, Ross read a fan letter he received: “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.”
By the ‘90s, the show drew millions of viewers and aired on almost 300 PBS stations nationwide, until 1994, when Ross left his television career to focus on his health after developing lymphoma.
Sadly, Ross passed away after having complications from lymphoma when he was 52.
In 2019, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History acquired its collection of Bob Ross paintings and artifacts. The museum displays pieces like “On A Clear Day“, painted on-air during Season 14, Episode 8, and “Blue Ridge Falls.”
And in 2020, The Joy of Painting became available to stream on YouTube.
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