HIS MOM was a waitress, his dad a carpenter, and one day as a boy he hammered a piece off of his left index finger. But the sun was shining all day long and the beach was never far away, for Bob Ross grew up in Orlando, near Daytona Beach. There you could drive your car on the beach – if you had a car, and Bob didn’t. So he enlisted in the Air Force as a 17-year-old. They sent him 4,600 miles away from home, to Fairbanks, Alaska.
That was about as far as the voyage made by his ancestor, Hendrik van Valkenburg from Limburg, the Dutch South. Today we fly across the ocean in about seven or eight hours, back then it was a journey that could take up to three months. They were motivated emigrants, the Van Valkenburgs, just like their fellow Dutchmen who during the golden age left their country behind. Holland was wealthy, there were enough jobs, and education quality was good. Those who went to America, they were determined, they wanted adventure, painted themselves a future.
Van Valkenburg was not a name that would easily hold on to its original spelling. In America it soon became Falconburg, Faulkenborough or Fortenberry. In Hendrik’s case it became Faulkenburg, which eventually in a straight line resulted in Bob’s mother, and Bob himself.
BOB ROSS spent twenty years in Alaska, in Fairbanks, which among meteorologists is known as the US town with the widest temperature spread – very hot in summer, deep-freeze in winter. It’s where Bob saw snow for the first time. And mountains, tall ones. In his spare time he took painting lessons, the left index finger was long enough to poke through the eye of the palette. But art night school specialized in abstracts, and from that he learned nothing. Bob studied outdoor scenes and practiced in his time off by sometimes creating paintings in retirement homes that he afterwards donated to the home.
He noticed how much interest he generated by having the seniors watch, and how excited they got when they saw how quickly he finished a painting. Soon enough, it earned him extra pocket money, and then some, and before long he made more than the Air Force paid.
Bob Ross never liked to talk about his private life, but he did admit that as a sergeant he was abrasive, often barking at young airmen. By the time he retired, he promised himself two things: never dress anyone down again, and always remember the mountains and the snow. He had short military hair, a crew cut, and going forward he let it grow.
BOB ROSS appeared on TV 403 times with The Joy of Painting, and produced a new painting from scratch in 381 of those episodes. In some 150 he included a mountain, more than half of those with snow. Almost every painting had at least one or more trees, “happy little trees,” a hundred paintings with grass, two hundred with a lake or a stream, eighty had an abandoned house or barn, it was always daylight with only three exceptions, and he never painted a living creature. Only two Bob Ross paintings had a bridge – in his landscape only he was welcome.
Bob was a keen businessman. He disliked his own round head of hair, but he realized it was his hallmark. His TV appearances were meant to support selling painting materials in stores from coast to coast, and to make paid appearances across the country. It worked, Bob Ross became a millionaire. He never barked again, always spoke softly. The son of Limburg died of leukemia, 52 years old, almost thirty years ago already.
