1. Before Ross became a TV painter, he spent 20 years in the United States Air Force and retired with the rank of master sergeant.
2. He worked for FREE. Ross could bang out an entire 13-episode season of The Joy of Painting in just over two days, which freed him up to get back to teaching lessons.
3. He didn’t sell his painting, however, Ross did sell some souvenir gold pans during his stint in Alaska.
4. He loved animals. During his childhood in Florida, he once shocked his mother by trying to nurse a wounded alligator back to health in the family’s bathtub.
5. He didn’t love the Fro. Ross had an uncanny knack for marketing, though, so he knew that trimming his locks down to a more conservative ‘do would probably undercut part of his business.
“I’ve never claimed that this is investment art. When we first started out, all the art colleges and universities across the country would sort of badmouth what we were doing. It’s funny that a lot of them now are sending us letters saying, ‘We may not totally agree with the way you paint, but we appreciate what you’re doing, because you’re sending literally thousands of people into art colleges.’” - Bob Ross
