Happy Clouds, Happy Trees: The Bob Ross Phenomenon by Kristin G. Congdon, Doug Blandy, and Danny Coeyman

Category: 50 Books

bobross

I really enjoyed this book about Bob Ross. It is not a biography exactly, but more a look at Ross’s art and lifestyle.

I remember watching The Joy of Painting on PBS on Sunday afternoons in the ’80s and early ’90s with my dad and trying not to fall asleep to Bob’s soft, hypnotic voice. We were both impressed that he could finish a painting in 30 minutes, and I was more impressed than my dad who said that Bob Ross was like a Xerox machine with paint. I saw his point, but I still loved to watch him crank out a painting. Our favorite part would come toward the very end of the episode. Sometimes Bob would have this good painting going on, right? And then at the end he’d blow the whole thing by adding a giant tree in the foreground, and dad and I would lose it.

“Wait, what’s he doing?”

“Oh God, here it comes!”

“TREE!”

“Called it!”

We had fun.

Reading this book brought back those memories, and it made me think a lot about art school in the 1990s. I love that the authors were so kind to Bob Ross in this book. They don’t go so far as to say that Bob Ross made high art or anything, but they do feel that maybe he didn’t deserve a complete snub from the Art World. I agree. I mean, while I was earning my painting degree I was never encouraged to paint a single landscape, and to mention Bob Ross would’ve gotten me laughed out of the studio.

But the way Bob Ross would talk about painting and that anyone could do it, that you control the world in your painting, that’s really good stuff. That’s empowering. I really appreciate that now more than I would have in my 20s.

The other thing I really liked in this book were the two chapters comparing/contrasting Bob Ross to Andy Warhol and Thomas Kinkade. I really liked what they did there.

This is a really sweet book about a really sweet man. And you don’t have to be an artist or hobbyist to enjoy it. I feel like anyone who watched The Joy of Painting would get a kick out of reading this.

 

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