I remember catching Bob Ross on PBS when flipping channels back in the 90s, and being just mesmerized: by his hair, his voice, his application of Prussian Blue and Van Dyke Brown and Sap Green with a two-inch brush to make a happy little tree in front of some mountains atop a crystal lake.
The dude was a pot brownie in denim, and he made gorgeous landscapes somehow magically appear out of nowhere upon an 18x24 canvas, gently brushed with liquid white. Let me be clear: I have no artistic ability so I may be easily impressed. Also, I may have smoked my fair share of marijuana while channel surfing between the years of 1995 and 1999.
I’ve begun watching these shows with my son and daughter on Hulu, and I’m still as mesmerized by ol’ Bob Ross and his fluffy 'fro and happy little clouds, but his art reminds me of something you’d see hanging on the wall of a Ramada in Jeff City Missouri or being sold along the back wall of a Goodwill in Fowlerville Michigan.
So, I’ve come to the conclusion that Bob Ross is: 1) Relaxing and inoffensive to listen to, 2) An interesting character, and 3) A technically good painter. But, he’s basically a really shitty artist. He spits out these generic landscapes while lulling his viewers into a sense of wonder, making you say “Holy shit dude, that’s a fucking pine tree. How did he do that?” And he did it all while wearing the same clothes for like 30 seasons. God bless him and his technique, but he basically sucked as someone who created ART, right?
His art was really art. He’s not a great master. But not too many people are.
Ehh. He was what he was. And …he had a pet squirrel! That made him cool to me.
Pot brownie in denim is a perfect description.
I would argue the time formatting of the program didn’t allow for more complicated compositions. A composition that you can crank out in half an hour can’t be too overly detailed.
I would wonder what his personal projects look like, the paintings he worked on for days or even hours that weren’t part of the show (he repainted each show’s painting over a few hours to polish it more for photos for his instructional books).
As an artist, I marvel at his quickness. One thing enviable about him is how deliberate every stroke was, or if not, how easily he could turn it into something deliberate looking. Nothing was ever overwrought or over worked.
Unless you’re implying something by the all-caps ART other than the usual understanding. It wasn’t sophisticated, but it very much was art. Nothing much off about the compositions or the perspective or the lighting or anything.
Even frigging Kinkade made art (or his ghost painters did), even if it looked like every cottage was burning on the inside.
I actually do see what you are saying. While his paintings are art, they aren’t really challenging or putting forth new artistic ideas.
However, I would argue that’s just due to the format of the show. It’s not just that he’s doing it in 30 minutes, as others said. It’s also that the whole point is teaching art. And his whole idea is that anyone can create art if they want to. That is the message behind his art, which remains the same no matter what he paints.
So, sure, I wouldn’t characterize anything he painted on the program as “great art.” It is more “something pretty that you can learn to make, too!” But I don’t think it’s valid to say he sucked at art because of that.
He knew all the cheesy shortcuts required to make a cheap motel painting. And as a former Master Sergeant in the US Air Force, I suspect pot brownies loomed kind of small in his life, but don’t know that for a fact. His paintings are being stored at an office park a few blocks from my old high school in Herndon, VA, by someone I actually (vaguely) knew from there.
As suggested above, he’s not so much an “artist” as he is an “art teacher”. Nobody would criticize an art teacher because their classroom demonstration of art technique wasn’t also groundbreaking artistic expression.
Ross was an art teacher. He never claimed to be an artist and never made a living doing fine art. Before the show, he made his money from painting on souvenir gold-mining pans in Alaska and from selling art supplies.
His talent was for teaching and showing people how to create a passable amateur painting. That’s not easy.
I personally preferred Bill Alexander – the guy who taught Ross all he knew – and, of course Jon Gnagy. I found Ross boring.
What is ART is a question that can and will be debated until the heat death of the universe, and there still won’t be a definitive answer.
But between a Bob Ross painting, and something by Basquiat, I know which one I want in my house. The one with happy little trees. If there ever was a case where there is an unwarranted “haters gotta hate”, it applies to Ross. The man, and his art, offend no one unless you want to be offended.
A quick Google search of Ross’s paintings turns up a vast quantity of landscapes featuring trees, mountains, and waterfalls. A small minority of his paintings so searched are still-lifes of flowers, chiefly mums.
Is he known to have painted other subjects? People, animals, mechanical objects? Abstract work? Just curious if Ross had done private work that differed markedly from his public work.
Yeah, Bill Alexander was the original. His wet-on-wet technique was the first one I learned when I was taking painting lessons in the 80s. A two inch brush, a four inch brush and a palette knife were about all you needed to do an Alexander-like painting.
