This day is filled with good birthdays world wide. People of all walks of life share this day, October 29, the day they came into the world. Both the living and the dead.
There’s Harriet Powers, an African-American slave. Among many things, she was an artist in the way of quilt making. (Bible Quilt 1886). (1837 – 1910)
Or how about Fanny Brice? How I loved Fanny Brice, or Barbra Streisand’s Funny Girl. The Ziegfeld Follies. (1891 – 1951)
On a downturn, there is Joseph Goebbels, the German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany. One of Hitler’s Guys. (1897 – 1945)
I could go on with the list. But the one that stood out for me today was Bob Ross. Yes, the painter, the art instructor, and television host. But he didn’t start out that way.
As far as his show went, I never watched it by choice. My Mom would have it on sometimes, and I’d take a look then. I have to admit, it always sucked me in, right away, watching this guy paint on his happy canvases, time and again. He always seemed so gentle, talking about his happy little snowflakes.
Bob Ross was Florida-born, in Daytona Beach, in 1942. There isn’t much to learn about his early life. His parents were named Jack and Ollie. They were a carpenter and a waitress, respectively. Little Bobby cared for sick animals as a kid. That seemed to be his big interest. Those injured animals included armadillos, snakes, alligators, and squirrels. But, he didn’t much care for school, and by the ninth grade, he had dropped out entirely.
Who would have looked at him, later in life, and known that he was a military man. Yes, he enlisted when he was eighteen in the United States Air Force. The military way must have suited him, as he rose to the rank of master sergeant and served as the first sergeant at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska. Bob said he was one of those sergeants who had to get in guys’ faces and yell their heads off — making them scrub the latrines or do loads of pushups. Once he left, he vowed never to raise his voice again. I imagine he never shouted at his paintings.
But that’s where he learned to paint, by the way. In the military. He took his first-class there. They were mostly teaching “abstract” painting, and he wanted to paint reality. He found his own way. So, Ross worked as a part-time bartender while still serving in the Air Force. That’s when he discovered a TV show called The Magic of Oil Painting, hosted by German painter Bill Alexander.
This guy, Alexander, used a 16th-century painting style called “alla prima.” Alla prima is the Italian word for “first attempt.” The technique is described as “wet-on-wet” and it allowed him to create an oil painting within thirty minutes. He loved it and kept studying.
Eventually, he would take souvenir gold-mining pans and paint Alaskan landscapes on them. Happy little scenes, of course. The income from selling those pan-paintings eventually surpassed his military salary. So Bob Ross retired from the Air Force in 1981 as a master sergeant.
Somewhere between Alaska, and Indiana, he became the creator and host of The Joy of Painting. The show was filmed at the studio of the PBS station WIPB in Muncie, Indiana. And we all know the Joy of Painting. It aired from 1983 to 1994 on PBS. But these days, it has an incredible cult following.
Sadly, he died in 1994. He was only 52 years old. He had lymphoma and kept it a secret from the public. He’s buried in Gotha, Florida.
Whether we loved the show or it drove us crazy, is no matter. His approach gives us a great parallel in life.
Every morning when we wake — or we can take it even further, to every minute — we are given a brand new blank canvas. And what we decide to put on that canvas is entirely up to us. In that moment. We can paint a bunch of happy little trees around a happy little lake. Or we can smather a bunch of gray paint all over the place and see the dismal. Happy bunnies? Or gray blobs?
All of this, figuratively, of course. I mean, when I actually paint a happy bunny, it looks an awful lot like a gray blob. But it is the thought that counts. And we should always — always — make our thoughts count.
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“We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents.”
― Bob Ross
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“The secret to doing anything is believing that you can do it. Anything that you believe you can do strong enough, you can do. Anything. As long as you believe.”
― Bob Ross
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“Lets build a happy little cloud.
Lets build some happy little trees.”
― Bob Ross
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The happy trees can make our moments.
