In all the work you are given, do the best you can. Work as though you are working for the Lord, not any earthly master. – Colossians 3:23

In an interesting juxtaposition of style and era, history and pop-culture, Renaissance and 20th Century arts and crafts, Rebekah and I followed up our visit to the North Carolina Museum of Art with a couple of hours of Bob Ross over in Rocky Mount.

It was Venetian, Ottoman and Samurai art on the one hand, then PBS “painting is for everyone” on the other. There is a remarkable breadth and depth of variety when it comes to the creative expressions because each one of us is so diverse and unique. There is art that speaks of such genius it should be in museums and belong to everyone, art that just about sets our souls on fire – and then there is the art my parents would choose to hang on their living room wall.

Walking around the Bob Ross exhibit with our friends Gayle and John I realized that this is what makes art so powerful. I could see my parents (who responded to the Peter Max Rebekah and I love so much with, “a five-year-old could have done that in ten minutes”) actually putting a Bob Ross over their fireplace.

The point of art is to reach in and touch the soul. And by his very accessibility that is what Bob Ross did.

Ross’s half-hour show, The Joy of Painting, aired on Public Television from January 11, 1983 to May 17, 1994, with a total of 403 half-hour episodes produced over 31 seasons. He simply and disarmingly invited people – everyone – into the world of art, and he demystified the process to the extent that many of his viewers were inspired to become serious artists themselves.

My thought, as we walked around, watched a couple of his videos, and wondered at the elegant simplicity of his process, was “How can I be just as positive and invitational and straightforward when I communicate what is important to me?”

In a sense, Bob Ross is a more effective ambassador than, say, my favorite impressionists – Turner, Monet, van Gogh – in that he is able to engage people in the step-by-step of the process.

There is, of course, room for both mystery and clarity in art, just as there is in the exploration of faith.

So thanks, Bob Ross, for the reminder that while deep and layered and nuanced and genius have their place, the simple joy of stepping in through an entry point is just as important… and in many cases that stepping in turns out to be enough.

May we all understand that we are invited in, and that we have so very much to learn – DEREK