The Bob Ross Effect
He was an unassuming legend with his own niche daytime television show where he taught not only how to create art but how easy it is to create art, Robert Norman Ross the host of over four hundred episodes of The Joy of Painting across thirty three seasons in eleven years still repeated over thirty years after his death and now celebrated in The Bob Ross Effect.
Written and performed by Sarah-Louise Young who welcomes the audience with biscuits and chatter, her soaring jazzy voice hitting the high emotional notes of the legacy of “the bloke with the beard and the bushy hair” in songs composed in collaboration with musician Jordan Paul Clarke, it is a contrast to the soft voice she adopts to emulate Ross as she dons her disguise to begin the lesson.
A show for eccentrics and outsiders who aspire paralleling Ross’ enduring mantra that “there are no mistakes in life, only happy accidents,” Young telling the stories of her own brother who didn’t fit in the mundane life expected of him and her dear friend Lynn Ruth Miller who late in life reinvented herself as an artist and performer, they are enduring inspirations to her in their refusal to settle for the conventional as Ross has been to many.
The enchanted audience issued with paper and crayons for revealing expressions of self, there is no judgement so nobody can be wrong in what they create, abstract lines and ideas passed around as a preamble to the surprising final invitation, each person safe to offer their own unique vision and to take with them as they leave, perhaps to continue on their journey into art.
