Bob Ross is hugely popular on YouTube, where he teaches the public how to confidently and quickly paint beautiful, brushstroke-free landscapes. His paintings almost always follow a formulaic composition: snowy mountains +pine trees + a lake + a cabin +clouds.
The endlessly replicable “perfect nature” he depicts is not nature as it exists in reality, but a visually
domesticated ecosystem—one without risk, conflict, pollution, or historical traces.
Each painting repeats the same proposition: “Everything is fine.”

I bought a landscape painting on eBay that someone had made by following his tutorial—and then I
“smashed” the painting with a bowling ball.

It's Going Down 2025
Mixed Media Installation
(Bowling ball, Steel railing,
Found painting on wood)
100x100x50cm

Photo: Bang