https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=playlist

Bob Ross the person died close to­ly thir­ty years in the past, however Bob Ross the arche­typ­al TV painter has nev­er been extra broad­ly identified. “Along with his dis­tinc­tive hair, gen­tle voice, and sig­na­ture expres­sions corresponding to ‘hap­py lit­tle timber,’ he’s an endur­ing icon,” writes Michael J. Mooney in an Atlantic piece from 2020. “His like­ness seems on a large assort­ment of objects: paints and brush­es, toast­ers, socks, cal­en­dars, dolls, orna­ments, and even a Chia Pet.” Right here in Korea, the place I reside, he’s uni­ver­sal­ly known as Bob Ajeossi, ajeossi being a form of col­lo­qui­al title for mid­dle-aged males. It’s fairly an after­life for a soft-spo­ken pub­lic-tele­vi­sion host from the eight­ies.

Ross fast­ly turned a pop-cul­tur­al fig­ure in that period, star­ring in semi-iron­ic MTV spots by the ear­ly nineties. However over the a long time, writes Mooney, “the appre­ci­a­tion of Bob Ross has mor­phed into some­factor close to­ly uni­ver­sal­ly earnest.” It helps that he has “the ulti­mate calm­ing pres­ence,” which has drawn spe­cial appre­ci­a­tion right here within the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry: “Greater than a decade earlier than most ther­a­pists had been telling shoppers to be thoughts­ful and current, Ross was telling his view­ers to appre­ci­ate their each breath.” This med­i­ta­tive, pos­i­tive temper per­vades all of The Pleasure of Paint­ing’s greater than 400 document­ed broad­casts, and so they even deliv­er the sooth­ing results of what YouTube-view­ing gen­er­a­tions know as “unin­ten­tion­al ASMR.”

Now you may watch virtually all these broad­casts on a sin­gle YouTube playlist, which incorporates all of The Pleasure of Paint­ing’s 31 sea­sons, orig­i­nal­ly aired between 1983 and 1994. (The movies come from the offi­cial YouTube chan­nel of The Pleasure of Paint­ing and Bob Ross.) Regardless of hav­ing finish­ed its run nicely earlier than any of us had ever imag­ined watch­ing video on-line, the present now feels prac­ti­cal­ly made for the inter­web, what with not simply its ASMR qual­i­ties, but in addition the paraso­cial pal­li­ness of Ross’ per­son­al­i­ty, the instruc­tion­al val­ue and sheer quan­ti­ty of its con­tent, and the excessive­ly con­sis­tent for­mat. Each time, Ross paints a com­plete pic­ture from begin to fin­ish: usu­al­ly a land­scape fea­tur­ing mighty moun­tains, free­dom-lov­ing clouds, and hap­py lit­tle timber, however occa­sion­al­ly some­factor simply dif­fer­ent sufficient to maintain it inter­est­ing. And so the person Mooney describes as “prob­a­bly America’s most well-known painter” lives on as a beloved YouTu­ber.

Relat­ed com­ment:

The Bob Ross Vir­tu­al Art Gallery: A New Site Presents 403 Paint­ings from The Joy of Paint­ing Series

What Hap­pened to the 1200 Paint­ings Paint­ed by Bob Ross? The Mys­tery Has Final­ly Been Solved

Expe­ri­ence the Bob Ross Expe­ri­ence: A New Muse­um Open in the TV Painter’s For­mer Stu­dio Home

The Joy of Paint­ing with Bob Ross & Banksy: Watch Banksy Paint a Mur­al on the Jail That Once Housed Oscar Wilde

Arti­fi­cial Neur­al Net­work Reveals What It Would Look Like to Watch Bob Ross’ The Joy of Paint­ing on LSD

Watch a Mas­ter Japan­ese Print­mak­er at Work: Two Unin­ten­tion­al­ly Relax­ing ASMR Videos

Based mostly in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embody the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the guide The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by way of Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social web­work for­mer­ly referred to as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.