Mastodawn

“Gotta have opposites, light and dark and dark and light, in painting. It’s like in life. Gotta have a little sadness once in awhile so you know when the good times come.”…

Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting ran on PBS (and the CBC) from 1983 to 1994. Reruns continue around the world, including the non-commercial digital subchannel network Create and the streaming service Hulu. As part of its launch of Twitch Creative, Twitch streamed every episode over a nine-day period starting on October 29, 2015 – what would have been Ross’s 73rd birthday– and scored 5.6 million viewers. So they created a weekly rebroadcast of all 31 seasons of The Joy of Painting to air, with episodes in order, on Twitch each Monday from November 2015 onward, and a marathon of episodes each October 29. In the United Kingdom, the BBC re-ran episodes during the COVID-19 pandemic while most viewers were in lockdown at home.

Ross is estimated to have pained 30,000 canvases during his lifetime. But as those paintings are scarce on the art market, sale prices of the paintings average in the thousands of dollars and frequently topping $10,000. Lately, they’ve done even better– and for an important cause.

Starting last November, auction house Bonhams has been offering what will be a total of 30 Ross oils to benefit the public broadcasting system that made him famous…

Bonhams has revealed the next works by the beloved US television painter Bob Ross it will offer for sale, with auction proceeds going toward public television following devastating funding cuts by president Donald Trump’s administration. More than $1bn in federal funding previously allocated to support public broadcasters was slashed by the Republican-controlled congress last year.

Last year, Bonhams announced it would sell 30 Ross paintings donated by Bob Ross Inc to benefit public television. The first three paintings from the group went up for sale in November and fetched a combined total of $662,000 with fees. Ross’s painting Winter’s Peace (1993) sold for $318,000 with fees, setting an auction record for the artist. Just weeks later, that record was shattered again when his painting Cabin at Sunset (1987) sold for more than $1m in an online charity auction for the Public Media Bridge Fund initiative [see here], organised by the television host John Oliver. [One more reason to love John Oliver.]

Three more Ross paintings will be part of the “Americana: Crafting a Nation: Art, History & Legacy” auction on 27 January at Bonhams in Massachusetts, and could fetch as much as $155,000 collectively, according to the auction house’s estimates.

Valley View (1990) is estimated to sell for between $30,000 and $50,000, and was the first work completed for the 21st volume of Ross’s Joy of Painting instructional book. Change of Seasons (1990) comes with an estimate of $40,000 to $60,000, and was completed live on air in 1990, on the 11th episode of the 20th season of his The Joy of Painting television series. In that episode, Ross describes the scene as “just a beautiful little painting”.

Babbling Brook (1993), a unique oval-shaped painting, is estimated to fetch between $25,000 and $45,000. It was completed during filming for the first episode of the 30th season of The Joy of Painting. Ross often let the subject in his landscapes develop as he went along, encouraging viewers to add spontaneous details as they saw fit. While painting Babbling Brook, Ross said, “I see something!” and painted in a waterfall, adding: “Let your imagination take you to any world that you want to go to.”

An additional 24 Ross works will be sold throughout this year across Bonhams salesrooms in New York, Boston and Los Angeles, the auction house says…

Bob Ross’s Babbling Brook (1993)

Giving back: “More Bob Ross paintings head to auction to benefit US public television” from @theartnewspaper.bsky.social.

* Bob Ross

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As we “don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents,” we might note that Ross’ rough contemporary and fellow “popular” painter, Thomas Kinkade was born on this date in 1958. While Ross was concerned with communicating the joy of creating and was opposed to his paintings becoming “financial instruments,” Kinkade was focused on capitalizing on his creations.

Kinkade, who described himself as a “master of light” (putting himself in the company of Rembrandt and Caravaggio), achieved success during his lifetime via the mass marketing of his work as printed reproductions and other licensed products through the Thomas Kinkade Company (according to which, at one point one in every 20 American homes owned a copy of one of his paintings).

Ross died in 1995 of complications from lymphoma (which he’d had for several years). KInkade died in 2012 of acute intoxication from alcohol and diazepam.

Thomas Kinkade “Bambi’s First Year” (source)

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“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that”

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Day

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