Joan Kowalski’s first job at Bob Ross Inc., the business her parents cofounded in 1985 with the beloved TV painter, was answering the telephone. It used to be one of the best jobs in the office. She kept doing it now and then, even after becoming president of the company. “We’re so used to just having people swoon over Bob. It makes our day. It’s what we are all doing here,” Kowalski says. “We actually fight over answering the phone.”

That has changed over the past month. After the scathing documentary Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal and Greed debuted on Netflix, calls to the Herndon, Virginia, business turned angry. The film depicted the company as exploitative after Ross’s death in 1995 and heartless toward his survivors, particularly Ross’s son, Steve Ross. Now when the phone rings at Bob Ross Inc., the dozen or so people who work there brace for an earful. “When the phone rings, maybe it’s not going to be somebody who just wants to gush about Bob for 15 minutes,” Kowalski says.

Apart from those who call to vent their anger or slam the business on social media, fans of the gentle landscape painter with the iconic Jiffy Pop hairdo want answers from Bob Ross Inc. 

The company did not participate in the documentary, apart from a written statement rejecting some of its claims. But now Kowalski, who in 2012 took over control of the business from her parents, Ross’s original partners Annette and Walt, gives V.F. her first interview addressing the concerns raised by the film.

The Aftermath

Vanity Fair: The documentary on Netflix came out about a month ago, and I wondered what has happened for you and your company over the last several weeks? What’s your perspective on this?

Joan Kowalski: We got [criticism] mostly on social media and with a lot of emails and a lot of negative phone calls. Especially I’d say in the first week and a half. We were just slammed. Even at my home, at my parents’ home. Our email addresses and our faces were being posted all over social media.  It’s quieted down a little bit, although we still don’t have... Social media is not showing the love like we’re so used to, which is breaking our heart, because normally social media—we’ve got nothing but just gobs and gobs of love towards Bob. So, it’s slowed down a lot. The sort of threatening of my family personally has slowed down a lot as well. In terms of our business partners, our corporate colleagues, that sort of thing, there’s been no real change [since the documentary came out.]

You haven’t lost any business or seen paint sales drop?

No, surprisingly enough, no. But that doesn’t mean that we aren’t still pretty devastated. I worry that fans are fascinated now with showing so much vitriol towards the company that they’re forgetting that they love Bob. That’s a little of what I’m worried about.

It sounds like the certified Bob Ross painting instructors have been feeling the brunt of this.

The certified instructors are. They’re the grassroots, and they’re getting beat up bad.

So they’re hearing people say, “Why should I take this class? Because you guys are...”

People want to know if they’re giving us money. And certified instructors have to say, “We don’t pay Bob Ross Inc. for anything. They give us the use of the intellectual property for free. We don’t pay them. We don’t pay them anything.” They’re not franchised. We just train them how to paint, how to teach, give them the intellectual property with no fee involved, and then send them out to teach classes.

And you benefit when people buy paints and canvases and equipment.

Right. Exactly, exactly.

The Kowalski Connection

Let me ask about your parents, Annette and Walt. You’ve been running the company since 2012, right?

Yes.

And so that’s when they stepped back. Are they fully retired? 

Yes, they have stepped back 100%. My father is 92. And he only [fully] stepped back when COVID happened, so that was maybe a year and a half ago. So, in his 90s, he still had his fingers in everything. My mother is 85, and she stepped back several years ago, because she was more on the creative side, and we’ve got some certified instructors that handled that side of it beautifully under her direction. They are fully retired now.

I presume you worked there in other capacities before being president.

Yes, I’ve worked here since 1988. I started out answering phones and mail and entering orders in the computer, and then started doing a lot of writing, mostly for Bob. He liked the way I wrote. And so I was able to get into his head a lot through writing on his behalf, those letters to the artists that you see in his instructional books and newsletters, things like that. Little by little, I just started nosing around and working closely with my father, working closely with Jane [Bob Ross’s wife, who co-founded the company with him and the Kowalskis]. And then here we are 35 years later, and I haven’t missed a day.

Are your mother and father aware of the documentary?  

They are aware of the documentary. I’m pretty sure that they have not viewed it. I’m not sure, to be honest with you.  

What do you want to say to people who’ve seen the documentary and have questions about how Bob Ross Inc. operates?

I want to say that there’s a lot more information that was not in the documentary that would help them better understand [the situation]. The documentary was really all Steve [Ross] and his two business partners. There’s a lot more information that I think would make people feel better. The idea that this thing got snatched away from Steve—that’s just not at all what’s going on.

[Note: Steve Ross sent this response to her remarks via Netflix: “Until this week, BRI had me under an NDA so that I was legally prohibited from discussing specific details about the lawsuit publicly. In what feels like an effort to discredit me, they are now lifting the NDA to reveal that I was awarded a settlement. Specifically, what I received was a nominal fee that barely covered legal expenses. And sadly, I own zero rights to my dad’s name—my family name—from which others continue to profit.”

Joan Kowalski responded by confirming Bob Ross Inc. had asked to lift the NDA on Steve Ross and his partners: “Steve is able to use the Bob Ross name in connection with his own products and services in this context: ‘Bob Ross’ son Steve Ross’ or ‘Son of Bob Ross’ or similar. He can claim to paint ‘in the style of Bob Ross’ if he wishes. He can use images of Bob Ross and himself together to promote his products and services.”]

Harsh Business Practices?

Do you acknowledge that maybe there was a bit of brutality to the business in those early years?

I will say that back in those days, in the ’80s, there were a lot of television artists. If you watch public television, that was a very, very robust genre on public television was people painting on TV. And there were six, seven, eight. Today…not so many. But there were a bunch then. And yeah, the paint manufacturer and the brush manufacturer, everybody had this platform for developing products and books. And there was a lot of push and pull in those days. I can’t apologize for the fact that Bob just sort of stood out time and time again. 

One controversy I wondered if you could speak to was the flower painters, Gary and Kathwren Jenkins, and their description of your mother, Annette, and her rival flower-painting books and video. They seem to believe that she and Bob Ross Inc. targeted them to diminish a business rival. They also suggest in the documentary that Annette improperly copied aspects of their instruction books.  

I don’t think that you can block another artist from wanting to paint flowers. I did see the documentary where they say—it made me laugh, sorry—“In the book it says, ‘Load the brush with…,’ and then in Gary’s book, it says, ‘Load the brush with…’” Well, every single paint instruction book I’ve ever seen says, “Load the brush with a color.”

There are only so many ways to say, “Put paint on the brush”?

I understand that there may have been some grievances with the Martin F. Weber Co., but I wasn’t aware of them at the time. And don’t forget that manufacturers want to sell product. And however that whole thing fell into place, I don’t know the backstory on it.

Another allegation that seems to justify some criticism is that Bill Alexander [who taught Bob Ross his technique] was willing to help Bob, and do a video handing off his brush in support of him. And then he was caught off guard and said he felt “betrayed” when Bob Ross became more popular and had his own line of painting products.

I’ve talked to my parents about this. We saw and felt literally none of that. This is a new one on us. We’ve never heard that Bill Alexander was unhappy with Bob. That’s a brand-new one, and really it’s only sort of come out in the last couple of years. So I’ve not got any experience to share with you there.

Allegation of Deathbed Clashes

What’s the story behind Bob’s final months? The documentary spends a lot of time detailing what it says were tensions between Annette and Walt and Bob after the death of his wife, Jane, and conflict over the future of the company and control. What was happening at the end of his life between him and your parents?

The way the company was structured from the beginning was there were four partners—equal, each with 25 [percent ownership.] The way it was structured was that if one partner died, the other three pooled their money and purchased that quarter from the estate of the deceased person. That happened with Jane. And it also happened when Bob died. 

The remaining partners [Annette and Walt] pooled their money together and purchased Bob’s third from Bob’s estate. So the estate was paid the value of a third of the company at that time. Now what happens after the estate has been paid? I don’t know. That’s personal. That would be Bob’s personal assets which were then shared by his family in whatever way.

It seems like his brother, Jimmie, and his son Steve were the beneficiaries of that, and his third wife, Lynda. So your parents bought them out, but there was also a lawsuit and a settlement to resolve all of that back in the ’90s.

Not the part about purchasing the third, that went off smoothly, but then there were some things, aside from that personal wealth [that did lead to conflict]. This is very common. There were assets in Bob’s house that he had produced…

Paintings?

That [lawsuit] settlement was to just sort of clean up the loose edges. And I think most of [the paintings] were retained by the family, because they were produced during personal time of Bob’s. But the few that corresponded with television episodes were retained by the company. And that all went off without a hitch. And Bob’s personal wealth was retained by the family. I would imagine it was sizable, because Bob was not a big spender. He liked cars, you know?

Right…

If you look at it that way, you realize it was a little quieter than it’s being made out to be on the documentary. Now, Bob was very sick at the end. And the phone calls up here, two, three phone calls a day, making plans with my father at the office, were slowing down, obviously. It was quiet, and Bob was very sick. I never perceived it as being a rift of any kind. I just knew that the quietness was due to Bob being very sick. And there weren’t a lot of plans.

Was there bad blood between them at the end?

No. There were fewer contacts, yes. But like I said, I think that had to do with Bob being very ill.

The documentary noted that they didn’t attend his funeral. And that does strike me as a bit surprising given their long relationship. 

So what happened was when... [Pause.] I love your questions.

I know they’re hard questions, but...

They’re just good, because now I see your picture that you’re painting.

So what happened there?

When Bob was really, really sick, Uncle Jim [Bob’s brother Jimmie Cox], called my parents and said, “Bob’s getting close. You should come down here.” And my father says they got a flight that same day, went down, and spent time with Bob.

And Bob was in Florida at this point?

He was in Florida, yes. And he couldn’t speak anymore, but they spent a good deal of time just talking to him. And my father held his hand, which gets to me. My father took his hand and asked him if he wanted the company to continue. And Bob squeezed his hand and nodded yes, which we talk about at least once a day here, because that’s just affirming what we’re doing and what we’ve been doing for 35 years. I believe Bob died very soon after. 

Funerals are a funny thing. And my parents had just been there, had been with Bob. I don’t go to funerals myself. I think maybe my parents decided that since they’d just been there with him, that there wasn’t... It’s a family thing. And Bob had a brand new wife. And I don’t know that she sent out notices to everybody to come on down or anything. So it sounds sort of creepy, but not really, because of that visit that they had had with him just before.

Was there an awareness that there was going to be a dispute over aspects of the estate, and that was why they wanted to perhaps keep some distance between themselves and the family at the funeral?

Not at all. This whole thing is like a total... When we got sued [by Steve Ross and his partners] four years ago was the first we had heard of anybody being unhappy.

Lawsuit Against a Children’s Show

The Netflix documentary also asserts that Bob Ross Inc. is very litigious. One lawsuit that does stand out is against the children’s TV show The Adventures of Elmer & Friends over an episode in which Bob appears in a magic painting. The suit was filed in October 1995, just months after he died.

Right, right.

It turned out there was permission from his partners at Bob Ross Inc. for him to do that appearance.  

I’d have to look back, and I’m very sorry I’m not prepared in this regard. But I don’t think that actually was a suit…

It was. It was a lawsuit.

It was? Okay. So we have used the court system at times. We have to be really careful. The property, the Bob Ross intellectual property... You’d be surprised what people want to do with the Bob Ross name and image and his demeanor and his caricature and everything. And if you don’t nip things quick, it gets way out of control…. We’re very protective of our intellectual property. We learned it from was Bob. Bob was very protective of his image.

Do you still feel that a lawsuit was justified?

The property can get very, very far from our reach. And I think we’re always very protective of it first. And then, with this situation and with Bob wanting to do it…I’ll say yes and no. I’ll say yes, filing the lawsuit was the right move. 

Why do you feel that way?

BRI was able to make sure the video and cassette were what Bob wanted, and the settlement solidified the [producer’s] ability to promote and sell them to Bob Ross fans all over the world. As a president of a company that has intellectual property that is being scrounged at from vultures from all angles, it’s terrifying what people want to do with Bob’s image. I could curl your chair.  But yeah, definitely, once we protect the intellectual property, I think giving the green light was all that Bob was looking for at the time.

When I first wrote about the movie, I did ask the documentary’s director, “Do you think Bob Ross would have been Bob Ross without his business partner?”

And there is some shrewdness involved with that. We’re not eager to show people that. I guess Steve [Ross] doesn’t mind showing people that there is a matter of shrewdness to protecting intellectual property. Bob was an absolute fanatic about protecting the intellectual property he had created. He was the one we learned it from. He knew that his persona, his image could be used for bad. And I have to tell you, there’s a lot that we’ve protected the image from. As a result, it’s why he is so popular today with so many people. It’s because we have not allowed him to be in violent video games and products having to do with alcohol or marijuana or that sort of thing.

It’s a tough task, but I’m not ashamed of being pretty hard on that. We don’t want people to see the bad in anything, if it has to do with Bob Ross. And him running around a video game with a automatic weapon is not... These are the kinds of things we’ve protected it against.

Silencing Critics?

The film also suggests that Bob Ross Inc. uses the legal system to silence people who might criticize it, but I don’t see any legal claims that back that up. As you said, there are lawsuits over intellectual property violations…

I did a little research when I saw that part of the documentary. There are maybe more than a dozen suits that we participated in, and they’re all to protect the intellectual property. There’s not a suit at all for being upset with what somebody says about the company or its employees. That seems to be the rumor—that we all sue people if they say anything, and we’ve never done it.  

The U.S. court system [expects] companies to protect intellectual property. We have to do it. You have to show diligence. If you let it fly, one day you wake up and you’re unhappy with somebody using the IP for a violent video game, the judge is looking back to see if you’ve been doing this all along or if you just one day decided [to start.]

So you do sue over protecting the image, but you don’t sue over people criticizing you or your actions or the company’s actions?

No. And there’s quite a bit of that in the documentary that’s just so, so false.

[Note: Asked for a response to Kowalski’s comments, director Joshua Rofé sent this statement: “Our mission has always been to tell a truthful story about the life and legacy of Bob Ross. And we stand by the film we made. We would have loved for the Kowalskis to participate, as we had hoped to hear from all people closest to Bob, but they declined on more than one occasion. Once the film was completed, the Kowalskis agreed to answer questions in writing, and we included those specific answers at the end of the film.”]

Do you intend to take any action against Netflix or the documentary makers?

No. [Laughs.] You want me to spell that for you? N-O, period. We kind of stick that. We’ve got too much work to do, you know?

Understood.

And the other thing is that when the documentary said that Uncle Jimmie [Bob Ross’s brother, who held the controlling interest in his estate during the first settlement] was afraid to participate in the documentary, he called me, maybe two days after the documentary came out, and he said, “Joan, I have to tell you I never told anybody that I was afraid to participate in the documentary.” He said, “I just don’t…”— and he’s told me this before—he doesn’t do interviews. He doesn’t talk about his brother. He certainly does not talk about his dealings with Steve in the sort of caretaker position that he had. He’s just always been very private like that. But he felt he needed to call me and tell me that is just not true. 

Would he like to verify that with me?

 I can ask him. I agree with you. I think it would carry more weight.

[Note: Jimmie Cox emailed Vanity Fair the day after the interview. “[Regarding] my conversation with Joan Kowalski, I was never afraid of being sued by the Bob Ross Company. I also did not tell anyone that I was. I do not do interviews as my relationship with Bob Ross was personal.” Cox did not respond to follow-up questions.]

The Stockpiled Paintings

You mentioned that any paintings made on the TV show are considered property of the company. And you’ve probably heard fans discuss that there are not a lot of actual Bob Ross paintings on the market to acquire. How many paintings does Bob Ross Inc. have? Would you quantify it as thousands?

Not thousands. I’d say hundreds.

What’s the reason for that? Why keep them closed off?  

They’re actually not being closed off. We’re sending them out to galleries and museums across the world. Now COVID has sort of slowed this down. We had big plans for 2021, but a lot of these shows had to be canceled.

These are gallery displays or museum presentations?

Exactly. People do want to see the paintings. Back in the day, we didn’t hear so much about [people] wanting to see the paintings. But in the last five years or so... Usually about 24 of the paintings go out to a tiny little gallery. The smaller, the better. And people show up. One of them in Virginia—normally, they get maybe a thousand people a month. [After the Bob Ross exhibit] they were getting 50,000 viewers in a three month patch. It put them on the map. That’s why we’re holding onto these paintings. Bob wasn’t really all that into selling his paintings. He was more interested in you painting your own and hanging it on the wall. So we kind of stick with that.

Is there a reason not to sell them?

No, we just have never really thought of it, honestly. Certified instructors like to look at them when they’re being trained. So there are a bunch of them down at the training center that we have in Florida. We’ve donated a couple to the Air Force Museum and the Smithsonian. And we’re exhibiting a bunch. There’s just never been any real desire to sell them. They’re just sort of a tool.

Bob’s Son, Steve Ross

Is there anything else you want to say that I haven’t asked you that you’d like to address about Bob Ross or the company?

How much time do we have? How many days?

We have as much time as you want.

I would say that mostly the anxiety over how Steve is feeling is probably the thing that I would want to most solve by telling people that he’s not been left behind at all. His father, I think, left a lot to him. There are lots of things that were satisfactory to him during the settlement after the appeal.

The settlement you made with him after his 2017 lawsuit?

Yes, after the 2017 lawsuit. They did appeal after [it was dismissed]. And then we had a court-mediated settlement afterwards. And everybody was very happy. The thing I would want to address most would be to make sure that people don’t worry about Steve. He actually hasn’t shared all the details. He’s shared the ones that maybe he remembers or that sound the best, but he actually is good. 

What do you mean by that? Do you mean he’s the beneficiary of the business still or in some capacity?

Well, no, he’s not the beneficiary of the business, because he doesn’t work here.

Is there a percentage or anything that he gets that’s ongoing? What do you mean by, “He’s good”?

He’s not interested in anything having to do with the company, and we’ve honored that. He’s inherited his father’s personal wealth. And he’s also... Well, I’m trying to think of the things that aren’t in the settlement, because I can’t talk about the settlement. But some of the things that he’s saying in the documentary, I think he’s just not remembering. There was never any control over his name by the company. Steve Ross is his, and has always been his. People are very, worried about that—that he doesn’t have his name, and of course he does. [There are] some other things that aren’t mentioned in the documentary that would make people feel better about their worry for Steve. When we left the settlement table, everybody was happy. And so between that and this documentary, I don’t know what happened. The settlement was very good for him, and that’s what I can say.

Looking at this situation, it seems like everyone involved in these disputes clearly loves Bob Ross—they just can’t get along with each other.

I thought we all were getting along. I was telling somebody the other day, we’ve enjoyed nothing but complete adoration for what we’re doing on behalf of Bob Ross. We don’t take the adoration for granted at all, which is why this sort of negative side that’s been brought out is particularly painful to me, to my family, to the people that work here. Most of our people have worked here for 25, 30 years, to be honest with you. They are hurting. .. Like I said, my hope is that [people] haven’t replaced their obsession with the beautiful side of Bob with being mad at us. Right now, it’s looking like it’s replacing their love of Bob. And this is, “Please don’t.” They’re spending all their time now being mad at us. And I want is people to get back to just loving Bob.

This Q&A has been edited and condensed for context and clarity.

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