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Why Is Bob Ross Still So Popular?
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Bob Ross and the Joy of Painting
- Bob Ross created and hosted Joy of Painting, an instructional television show that ran for years.
- Even 25 years after his death, Bob Ross Inc. is still thriving. The official Bob Ross YouTube channel has over 4 million subscribers and more than 360 million total views. With the pandemic, millions of people have turned to Joy of Painting episodes.
- Bob Ross had a level of positivity that was contagious. When someone can display that amount of peaceful happiness, it compels people to partake in the bliss.
- Each episode feels complete. Before therapists knew to tell clients to be mindful and present, Ross told his viewers to appreciate every breath.
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Bob Ross's magical draw
The show was as meditative as it was instructive. Ross put out pure positivity into the world.
In every episode, Bob Ross explained his art as a way of capturing the eternal beauty of the world. When he filled his canvas with color, he'd say things like, "This piece of canvas is your world, and on here you can do anything that your heart desires." When he painted a cloud, he might say, "A cloud is one of the freest things in nature."
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Bob Ross and the art community
The contemporary art community never took the work of Ross seriously. Ross thought his art was for anyone who ever wanted to put a dream on canvas.
One comment under the YouTube videos captured his work this way: "He didn't paint to show how good of a painter he was. He painted to show how good of a painter you could be."
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Bob Ross and the road to success
A lot of what we know about Bob Ross can be gleaned from his art. He always painted scenes of nature, full of trees and mountains and clouds, and filled with animals. He almost never painted people.
He spent 20 years in the Air Force. During this time, he learned to paint. He enjoyed painting more than the Air Force. He first joined the company of the German-accented television painter Bill Alexander. After that, he started his own show, crisscrossing the country, and teaching classes nearly year-round.
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Genius is not tied to age
Genius is tied up with precocity. We think brilliance requires youth and energy and freshness. Mozart wrote his breakthrough Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-Flat-Major at the age of twenty-one. T.S. ...
Early and late bloomers
Prodigies like Picasso, who created a masterpiece at age twenty, tend to be "conceptual" in the sense that they start with a clear idea of where they want to go, and then accomplish it. Picasso once said that he could hardly understand the importance given to the word 'research.'
But late bloomers tend to work the other way around. Their goals are imprecise and their procedure experimental. They build their skills gradually throughout their careers, improving slowly over long periods.
Experimental artists
Experimental artists are perfectionists and are typically plagued by frustration in their inability to reach their goal. Their creativity proceeds through trial and error and takes a long time to come to fruition.
- When Cézanne was painting a portrait of the critic Gustave Geffroy, he made him endure eighty sittings before he declared the project a failure. He was notorious for slashing his canvases to pieces in fits of frustration.
- Mark Twain was the same. He fiddled and despaired and revised and gave up on "Huckleberry Finn" so many times that the book took him nearly a decade to complete.
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Limitations of Language
The rich and diverse aspects of human experience cannot be captured by the language of philosophy, no matter how rich it becomes.
Great poets see life around them as we do, but they skillful...
The Canvas
Literal language is functional, and is a utility, serving the purpose of communication, while poetry captures the beauty, the essence of an object, doing away with the descriptions and linear definitions.
The creative nature of consciousness can be described by the analogy of a canvas. Our consciousness is a blank canvas initially and as we gain education, experiences and perform actions, we paint this canvas, slowly adding details, and the final work of art is the story of our lives.
Our expression of creativity is born out of the interactions and experiences we keep having. The canvas that we paint can be cohesive and whole or can be broken and messy.
The Truth Shines
There are some creative and artistic people who are genuinely authentic in anything they do. They are having a secret inside them, a fragrance that comes with completeness and realism. These people have, through hardships, suffering, and reconciliation, have discovered a core inside them, a certain light that is brightly shining.
This quality shines through in the writings and works of genuine artists. Maybe their poetry, which is seemingly so profound, isn’t poetry at all, but pure truths that they have simply expressed honestly.
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Key Ideas
A Life Of Art
An artful life isn't about money and fame. It is about the difference an artist can make in the world.
Your art is worth creating even if it moves only one person.
Being an Artist 24/7
An artist lives and breathes art. The clothes, the home decoration, the hairstyle, even the words that artists speak are their own creation, deliberate and intentional.
A true artist is a living work of art.
Not Just One Kind
An authentic artist is diverse in his art forms, with a lot of interests.
There are several ways to express oneself and a true artist recognizes that.