Whimsical clouds. Lush colors. An idyllic and relaxed landscape. All are hallmarks of a Bob Ross canvas.
Now 30 original paintings by the television host and artist, who died in 1995, will be available for sale beginning next month through the auction house Bonhams, Ross’s estate announced on Tuesday. The proceeds will benefit public television stations across the country that have been grappling with the Trump administration’s cancellation of $1.1 billion in funding for public media.
The idea came about a few months ago when Joan Kowalski, the president of Bob Ross Inc., saw that Bonhams sold two privately owned Ross paintings in August, one for $114,800 and another for $95,750. She decided to donate the 30 paintings to American Public Television, which syndicates programs, including Ross’s PBS Show, “The Joy of Painting,” to hundreds of public television channels across the country.
“It will motivate bidders because it will help public television,” Kowalski said in an interview. “The marriage of the two ideas came together and then I couldn’t let loose of it until I set it all in motion.”
Ross became a beloved pop culture figure through “The Joy Of Painting,” which ran for more than a decade beginning in 1983. Born in Daytona Beach, Fla., he dropped out of high school and discovered his love of painting while serving in the Air Force. Ross built an art empire on a simple concept: that anyone could be a painter using his “wet-on-wet” technique, in which paint is applied to a canvas that has been coated with a thin base layer of oil paint.
The show featured Ross, with dulcet tones, bushy hair and a buttoned shirt, teaching the audience how to paint, say, “a happy little cloud” in the sky. “The Joy Of Painting” was carried by hundreds of public television stations across the country.
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The post Bob Ross’s ‘Happy Little’ Paintings Will Be Auctioned appeared first on New York Times.
