Of all the people one would least expect to have a sordid history, Bob Ross is right up there with, say, Jessica Simpson (who, yes, we now know has a sordid history). And yet, Ross’ dark past has less to do with him and more to do with the people that “created” him. Specifically, Annette and Walt Kowalski. The “patrons” who “made it all happen.” For that’s the caveat about patronage, innit?: the person who bankrolls the talent always wants the credit (for their financial benefit) in the end.
The same pretty much went for Ross, as we learn in Joshua Rofé’s documentary Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal and Greed. A title that one never would have expected of the happy-go-lucky, ultra-zen painting guru. Alas, in 2021, the curtain has been pushed aside on almost everything—an iconic personality from a public access show having a seedy backstory being no exception to the new rule.
So naturally, one of the early moments in the film establishes how Ross was told by Annette that she wanted to “bottle” his magic and sell it—a Faustian phrase any artist should run from if they ever hear it. That’s precisely what proceeded to happen as the 1980s unfolded to smile its unlikely favor upon Bob Ross…not exactly a man one would associate with Gordon Gekko’s illustrious “greed is good” speech, therefore coming across as a total anachronism in this decade. In fact, Ross, like Britney Spears, was a pure of heart sort of spirit who simply enjoyed doing the thing he was good at. A skill he perfected after becoming taken with German painter Bill Alexander, known as “The Happy Painter” on his PBS show, The Magic of Oil Painting (the precursor to Ross’ The Joy of Painting, which directly makes reference to The Joy of Sex). Ross subsequently began to travel along with him as an apprentice, of sorts, for painting classes taught to adults.
Although the wet-on-wet painting technique that Ross picked up from Alexander originated back in the fifteenth century (and was used by the likes of Caravaggio), it was Alexander who made the form his own by implementing the step of priming the canvas with his invention of Magic White™ paint, further innovating the wet-on-wet style with the type of palette knife (a large, straight-edged one) wielded to create the final effect. This idea of Ross “stealing” from Alexander and the bad blood that eventually developed between them over the resentment his mentor felt over it is not explored in Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal and Greed. For that’s not the “happy accident” of Ross finding more fame via his greater likeability (thanks to a gentler tone) that Rofé or Ross’s son, Steve (a key participant in the film), want to explore.
Rofé, who has brought us the recent hard-hitting docuseries, Lorena and Sasquatch, expands his talent into the full-fledged documentary for the second time with this film. And in casting a light on the idea that all art is doomed to become tainted in some way when profit starts to become the sole focus of those “pulling the strings,” our attention is brought squarely to the Kowalskis—the Jamie Spears in Ross’ life. For, like Jamie, it seems, the Kowalskis felt entitled to Ross’ entire fortune just because they “invested” in him early on (for Jamie, that meant throwing some earnings into Britney’s dancing and singing lessons throughout her childhood). At his side during classes to “help sell” paintings was the indelible image of a “white-haired lady”: Annette. She was a constant in Bob’s orbit; a shadow, if you will—much like the varied “handlers” that would come into Britney’s life in the mid-00s (see: Sam Lutfi). A woman Bob referred to on his show as “my friend and longtime partner,” perhaps there was a touch of Stockholm syndrome at play in terms of Bob being an increasingly willing prisoner to whatever Annette wanted out of him so long as he could simply be responsible for doing the work.
Funnily enough, it was because Bill Alexander’s classes were full that his protégé was “settled for” by Annette instead. And so, in another “happy accident,” Bob met Annette (a “good artist already”), possibly adding fuel to the resentment that built up within Alexander about Bob’s subsequent success. At one point, he even told The New York Times in a 1991 interview, “He betrayed me. I invented ‘wet on wet.’ I trained him, and he is copying me—what bothers me is not just that he betrayed me, but that he thinks he can do it better.” In some sense, Madonna might have said the same thing about every pop star that came after her (Britney included)…were it not for the fact that she herself was adept in the art of “careful grafting,” better at it precisely because she chose (and chooses) to borrow from more esoteric sources. Ross, evidently was less so, and the same went for the Kowalskis when they started to rip off another successful painting show’s act: Gary and Kathwren Jenkins’ The Beauty of Oil Painting.
With Annette blatantly stealing overt aspects of the Jenkins’ brand, centered on floral oil paintings, the duo is all too happy to speak to the manipulation and ruthlessness of the Kowalskis in the documentary. “She just wanted to control the whole art market,” Gary says at one point after Kathwren tells the tale of how the vice president of Weber informed her one day after Annette started to do similarly styled floral paintings that they would no longer be allowed to sell their signature badger hair brushes because the animal was on the endangered species list. Soon after, the Jenkins saw that Annette was selling a new line of badger hair brushes under the Bob Ross umbrella of products. Such is the power of clout (better known as money) to get people like the VP of Weber to do what the Kowalskis wanted.
This “no problem with stealing other artists’ work” philosophy emulated the Kowalskis’ urging of Ross to break out on his own and freely embrace the style of Alexander but “make it his own.” After all, they were willing to invest in the experiment, so long as he took their advice to go the “Happy Painter” route. Here, as well, shades of Britney being molded into the perfect consumable pop star are at play, with her parents/“patrons” and assorted record executives “nudging” her to shrink her natural instincts and talent as much as possible. To make matters even more oppressive for Ross—and lending credence to the oft-repeated line throughout the movie that many refused to be interviewed due to their fear of the Kowalskis and being sued by them—Walt had recently retired from the CIA at the time of Annette “discovering” this moldable talent. The Rosses even moved in with the Kowalskis when things were financially tight and Bob’s show on PBS had yet to take the world by storm.
Laying the groundwork for the revelation that Bob was sleeping with Annette, the comment is made that he was—in opposition to his somewhat sexless TV persona—a flirtatious man and that Annette, many years older, “felt renewed, inspired by Bob.” Mhmm, a.k.a. The Joy of Sex and The Joy of Painting collided. “She needed someone to work her out of her depression [after the death of her son],” Steve explains once footage of Annette talking about her first encounter with Bob is shown. Seeing something special in Bob, she then took him to her husband like some kind of fetched toy they could both play with. After all, everyone was still coming off the “swinging 70s” vibe at this juncture.
Annette also proudly declared in the aforementioned interview the now illustrious quote, “I said, ‘I don’t know what you’ve got, but I think we ought to bottle it and sell it.’” Bob was amenable enough, wanting mainly to be able to share his gift with as many people as he could, a TV show being, clearly, the best possible way to do so. One of Bob’s friends, John Thamm, remarks of his willingness to sign any old contract with the Kowalskis, “I don’t think Bob really understood what the future held for him at that time. He was just not into it for the money.” Hmmm, sounds like a certain conservatorship agreement we all know and hate.
At times, Ross’ generalizing isms (e.g. “This is your creation, you can do anything you want with it” and “You gotta have sadness once in a while so you know when the good times come”) that allowed for endless meanings to be projected onto them became something like a precursor to Britney’s cry-for-help Instagram posts. And, like Britney, it didn’t take long before Bob was no longer a person but a corporation—a brand to be sold in as many ways as possible to maximize profit margins that Bob himself would never see. Selling paint, canvases and brushes (often of inferior quality to what Bob would have wanted) was only the beginning for Bob Ross Inc.
And when Bob was dying of lymphoma, the Kowalskis didn’t bother displaying too much sadness, so much as an ardent concern for getting Bob to sign away the rights to his name so that it could be prostituted well into his afterlife. The intersection of art and capitalism, as usual, leaving no room for the art itself, least of all true appreciation for it. The antithesis of what Bob would have wanted for his legacy. Britney, in contrast, has never been as evasive about the idea that she was in pursuit of the part of the “American dream” that was supposed to allow for her financial freedom. While Bob might have already achieved that by way of his involvement with the U.S. Air Force before pursuing this “later in life” passion more fully, that didn’t mean he wasn’t very much deserving of all the profit he generated for the Kowalskis instead of, rightfully, for himself.
At the same time, both very different types of artists managed to somehow attract in their lives and to their talent the vulture-like personalities that would suppress their pureness of fervor and excitement for the medium of their choosing. A not so “happy” truth that entailed dampening the primary source of light in both Ross’ and Spears’ lives (well, before Spears went and decided to make Sam Asghari her new “artistic pursuit”…ahem, #TheJoyofSex).
Like Jamie calling the #FreeBritney movement nothing more than a conspiracy, the Kowalskis were quick to refute the statements made in Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal and Greed by deeming it “inaccurate” and “heavily slanted.” Sure, sure. But Ross fans, like the #FreeBritney ilk, aren’t buying it—literally. For many have now vowed never to purchase another Bob Ross Inc. product again as a means to cease support of such profiteering pimps. In this regard, something Steve Ross said about the documentary will perhaps stick in people’s minds: “I also believe the film will open people’s eyes to the exploitation of artists around the world.”
