When I was growing up, John Gnagy\u2019s \u201cLearn to Draw\u201d series on television encouraged everyone, especially kids, how easy it was to draw. I remember that at the end of the show viewers were encouraged to submit artwork for evaluation. My older brother\u2014he might have been about 9\u2014did an absolutely terrific drawing, for which he received a grade of \u201cC.\u201d He could take expensive correspondence classes to improve, which even I, as a young child, figured out was a scam (not that my family could afford art lessons).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the probing Netflix documentary, Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed<\/em>, produced by Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone and directed by Joshua Rof\u00e9, we get a portrait of one of the later and most popular television art teachers, Bob Ross, who, in the PBS series \u201cThe Joy of Painting\u201d preached that everyone had the ability to paint if they tried. Working out of a studio in Muncie Indiana, Ross completed an entire landscape painting in the course of the 30-minute PBS show, while offering cheerful and inspirational advice. With his deeply personal tone and sexy voice pitched to a largely female audience, Ross came across as a kindly art therapist. He soon became a \u201cbrand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bob Ross had his flaws as a person, but there\u2019s a much a darker side to the story, following his death from cancer at age 52 in 1995. It involves his promoters, Annette and (ex-CIA agent) Walt Kowalski, who took control of Ross\u2019s estate Through legal maneuvering. They have been marketing and licensing his name under Bob Ross, Inc. ever since, while successfully cutting out Bob\u2019s son, Steve, also a painter and art instructor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The company promotes art classes, painting supplies, and everything from Bob Ross watches to Chia Pets. It\u2019s a sad story, to be sure, especially because the “villains\u201d appear to have won the legal battle. Hopefully the new documentary, which is stirring up controversy, might have some impact, at least judging from the moral outrage being expressed on the company\u2019s FB page. Who wants to buy anything \u201cBob Ross\u201d when we all know now who\u2019s really getting rich off the artist\u2019s name?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was growing up, John Gnagy\u2019s \u201cLearn to Draw\u201d series on television encouraged everyone, especially kids, how easy it was to draw. I remember that at the end of the show viewers were encouraged to submit artwork for evaluation.Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4392,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,49,44],"tags":[52,51,54,53],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4391"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4391"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4394,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4391\/revisions\/4394"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}