Great artist, mentor, celebrity or environmental activist: Who was Bob Ross?

Iconic hair, brush in hand, icy landscape painting, breathy speech and a smile on her face. In the new film by Brit McAdams, Paint, which premiered on the 6th, Owen Wilson plays Carl Nargle, an almost perfect imitation of the artist Bob Ross.

However, the director does not confirm the fact that he was inspired by the legendary TV presenter and seems to be trying to build a fictional character navigating the present day, but with a hypster vibe conquered by an art direction steeped in references to the 80s.

Robert Norman, known as "Bob Ross", was a painter, art instructor and television presenter who is best known for creating The Joy of Painting, which aired on PBS in the United States, Canada and Europe. Then in Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, Turkey, Iran, South Korea, Australia and Japan.

One day he came across the program The Magic of Oil Painting, presented by the German Bill Alexander and decided to do his own show. In each episode of The Joy of Painting, Ross taught techniques for landscape oil painting, completing a painting in each program. The Joy of Painting, which ran from January 11, 1983, to May 17, 1994, won three Emmy Awards, and Ross went on to found his own line of art supplies, tutorial books, and painting classes, offered by instructors trained in a “Bob Ross method”, building a $15 million business. Did you see any similarities in this story?