Did Bob Ross secretly paint thousands of paintings in the 80s?

So I was listening to All the H3 this weekend and they did an episode all about Bob Ross. If you don’t know them, they are a podcast that dives into the history of different tv shows using nothing but archival interviews and behind the scenes information. <br><br>They thoroughly debunked several ‘conspiracies’ about Bob Ross, like the one that he was secretly a mean guy, the one where he was secretly rich, and the one where he was secretly an alcoholic. The one conspiracy that they weren’t able to give a straight answer on was, “did Bob Ross paint all his paintings or were there other people?”<br><br>So the thing is, Bob Ross paints an average of one painting per episode of The Joy of Painting. He films 30 episodes per season. They film 2 seasons per year, and he filmed for 11 years. So that’s about 660 paintings just from the show. <br><br>There’s also Bob Ross Inc. Which was his business where they sold pre-made paintings. He also licensed his paintings to companies that made posters and T shirts and calendars and all sorts of shit. So the conservative estimate is that Bob Ross made over 10,000 paintings over the course of his lifetime. <br><br>Now the conspiracy is that Bob Ross had a team of artists that were painting this stuff for him because there is no way one guy could paint that much. They had interviews with his son and wife and they thoroughly denied the existence of ghost painters. They did have a team of people that would do the underpainting on his canvases before filming but that’s it. <br><br>They also talked to several people that worked on his sets, and basically everyone agrees that Bob Ross spent time every single day painting, even onaturdays when he wasn’t filming. <br><br>There was also this interview where Bob Ross is in New York and he’s painting live on TRL. He was being interviewed by the host and talking about how painting is so important to him, and then in response to the host asking what he does when he isn’t filming, he said that painting is all he does. <br><br>But other places, there are interviews where Bob Ross is talking about how he loves painting, but also says he was in the air force for 20 years which is why he has such a stern voice and demeanor. He said he had to be a hardass because the air force is hard. And he said he’s happy now because he gets to paint all the time. But then he also says he only started painting about 5 years ago. <br><br>So the mystery is basically, who painted all those fucking paintings? If he only started painting 5 years before he started his show, how did he paint 10,000 paintings and also film a show full-time? And if he did hire people, it would have come out by now because there should be thousands of people out there who used to work for him. <br><br>It’s not like it matters either way, but it’s just weird because it’s something that nobody talks about.