‘Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed’ on Netflix

I recently watched the Bob Ross documentary on Netflix. What an amazing and hard-working talent! It’s still hard to believe that he can complete a beautiful landscape painting in 27 minutes on every episode of his PBS television series, ‘The Joy of Painting.’ Often times too, he would scare his producers and, in the final few minutes of his painting process, he would add a bold, dark object in the foreground, such as a tree trunk and would make it work well within the finished piece.

I won’t talk too much about the documentary, other than to say that my heart goes out to Bob Ross and his family. It’s really awful what happened to him in his business life. Bob was all about the painting and helping people to discover the the joy of painting, not the merchandising. It provides good information about the process his art-making, along with briefly showing his finished pieces, and talks about the successes of his show on PBS (an impressive 31 seasons in all). For these reasons, I would recommend seeing it. On the flip-side, it does shed light on the perils of the business side of art and contracts. Let’s just say that when you purchase almost anything with Ross’s image on it, including art supplies, the proceeds do not benefit his son/family. By the way, his son teaches landscape painting lessons in the style and manner of his father and carries on Bob’s wonderful legacy.

#BobRoss #PBS #TheJoyOfPainting

Copyright 2022 Tim Bovey.