http://www.biography.com/search/article.jsp?aid=9464216&search=
Painting instructor, born in Daytona, Florida, USA. Dropping out of school in the ninth grade, he served in the US Air Force, where he took his first painting lesson at an Anchorage, Alaska United Service Organizations club. After the service he attended various art schools until he learned the technique of ‘wet on wet’ from William Alexander (later his bitter rival), applying oil paints directly on one another to produce complete paintings (mostly landscapes) in less than an hour. In 1983 he began his instruction programme, ‘The Joy of Painting’, on public television, eventually carried by over 275 stations and spawning an empire that included videos, how-to books, art supplies, and certified Bob Ross instructors, thus making him one of the best-known and most highly paid of all American painters.
http://www.grignonsart.com/Artist_Bios_Pgs/Bob_Ross.htm
Bob Ross
Bob grew up in Orlando, Florida, when it was still a swampy lowland untouched by the magic of of Walt Disney. At 18 , he joined the Air Force, beginning a 20 year career in Medical Administration. He was filled with dreams of faraway places. His first assignment was in Florida. "I joined the service to see the world and they sent me back home," he laughs. Later those dreams did come true. Awesome and unspoiled, Alaska was his home for 12 of those 20 years in the service. It was there that he saw many of those beautiful scenes he paints each week on "The Joy of Painting". Throughout his service career, Bob's passion for painting grew. He studied art at colleges and universities across the country and t rained under a number of private instructors. In 1981 Bob retired form the military to pursue painting full time. He traveled constantly, demonstrating and teaching the wet-on-wet technique and sharing the joy of painting with thousands of people. Through his enduring PBS television series "The Joy of Painting", Bob Ross has become known to artist, both amateur and professional, all across the continent. To millions of other viewers he is a friend who enters their homes weekly or even daily with a half hour of relaxation and enjoyment and an appreciation of nature as only an artist can see it. Countless others know him only as "that fuzzy haired artist who does fabulous painting in half an hour on TV. For Beginner artists, Bob has provided the inspiration to pick up those difficult oil paints, perhaps for the first time and begin to learn the joy of painting. He has been the guide and mentor who has helped them from the first timid brush strokes to the proud completion of their first master piece. With 95% of all Public Television stations showing the series, "The Joy of Painting" has become the most popular learn to paint program of all time. Viewers and painters in every state plus Canada, Mexico and Japan can join Bob at least weekly for a half hour or more. It is Bob's gentle and encouraging manner that has won him so many friends and followers across the country. "Painting Should be fun, " he constantly reminds his viewers.
http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/s/w/swk122/A4.html
Bob Ross was born in 1943 in Daytona Beach Florida. School was not his calling and in ninth grade he joined the Air Force. It was in the Air Force where he was introduced to painting while stationed in Anchorage, Alaska. Finally finding something that interested him, Bob Ross pursued painting by attending several art schools after he finished his service. It seemed he shared the same characteristics as me, impatience, because he became frustrated with the traditional forms of art and decided to revolutionize the "Wet-on-Wet" technique so he could create a quick-study painting style that appealed to all citizens of various painting backgrounds. This style combined with his very likable and motivating personality reached the world through his television show, "The Joy of Painting".
"The Joy of Painting" was a public television show that began in 1983. Bob Ross's new style and attitude attracted millions of viewers over the next decade. Eventually about 275 stations carried the show and the global reach of his painting technique led to multimillion dollar sales of videos, how-to-books and art supplies. Viewers were enthralled by his ability to start with a bare canvas and turn it in to a beautiful landscape. He did this not with a typical small, fine brush but with large brushes that you would use to paint your house with. Along with those unorthodox brushes he used knives that with one scrape would make a mistake disappear instantaneously. The "Wet-on-Wet" method was unheard of before Bob Ross and it was a major factor in his popularity growth.
http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/artists/bob-ross/
Not a tremendous amount is known about Ross's youth, but he spent most of it in Daytona Beach, Florida. He mentions from time to time his childhood pets: an alligator who constantly chomped at Ross's fingers until finally it was set loose, and an armadillo who "tore up" everything in his father's carpentry workshop. He intuited that painting could change a person's life in much the same way people gravitate toward music, writing, or gardening. Following a brief career in the U.S. Air Force, Ross started to develop a quick-study oil painting technique meant to appeal to the masses. By distilling the artistic process into steps and keeping the number of colors to a minimum, he grew to be one of the few artists whose name is associated with the "wet on wet" technique: the progressive addition of oil or watercolor to a canvas without wasting enormous amounts of time waiting for content to dry.
Bob Ross historian and former business associate Annette Kowalski (along with her husband Walt and their daughter) presently run Bob Ross Incorporated from the quiet, secret suburbs of Washington, D.C. People clamor for his books and videotapes, his brushes and paints, his discarded dropclothes. What kind of easel does he use? What's gesso? They want to know everything, and they're prepared to put it all down on their Discover card.
After Bob Ross died at the age of 52, the majority of his original oil paintings were donated to charity or PBS stations. Meanwhile, a Louisiana band calling themselves The Bob Ross Experience continues to play gigs. Their influences include Poison, Dave Matthews and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Ross did in fact do a promotional spot for MTV (as well as posthumously appearing in a Celebrity Death Match videogame opposite Jerry Springer), but the bona-fide Bob Ross can only really be experienced in the syndicated wilderness of public television.