Bob Ross and his first wife, Vivian Ridge, welcomed their son Steve Ross who inherited his father’s gentle nature and artistic talent. Just like his famous father, Steve also became a skilled painter and has continued to keep the Ross family legacy alive through his own paintings and teachings.
Following the death of his father, Bob Ross, in 1995, Steve went off the radar and later emerged to fight a legal battle against Joan Kowalski. Kowalski’s parents had inherited the rights to Bob’s work and likeness, and Steve sought to gain control of these rights. Although he ultimately lost the case, his fight gained renewed attention in 2021 when a documentary produced by Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone shed light on the legal battle.
Steve Ross did not want to be a painter like his late father
Although Steve has now become passionate about painting, however, he initially refused his father’s attempts to involve him in the family business. He admitted to Vanity Fair that he regretted not following in his father’s footsteps early in his life.
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“As kids, we all want to defy our parents and hang out with our friends. But as we get older, we begin to understand that our parents are pushing us to be greater than themselves because they seek the best for us,” Steve said. “Like all young kids who know little about this world, I thought I knew everything as a teenager but had limited reference concerning what this world had to offer.”
Steve made his debut appearance on his father’s iconic show, The Joy of Painting, at the age of 17. In the episode, Bob proudly introduced his son to his audience, revealing that Steve was a painter just like him and had even sold his first painting at the age of 12.
Steve Ross became depressed after his father’s death
Steve had a deep admiration and love for his father, but the legal battles and business practices that followed Bob’s death were the last straw. The loss of his connection to his father’s legacy plunged him into a deep depression.
Steve ultimately turned his back on oil painting, avoiding anything that reminded him of his father and their shared passion. In his darkest moments, he even considered ending his own life by steering into oncoming traffic to “end the pain, once and for all.”
Steve Ross returns to painting
Despite these struggles, Steve persevered, spending many years in isolation and only occasionally teaching and painting to make a living. However, in a surprising turn of events, Steve reemerged in 2019 after 25 years of seclusion. He teamed up with Dana Jester, an old friend of his late dad, to hold landscape oil painting workshops, but this time he wasn’t introduced as Steve Ross, the son of Bob Ross.
Instead, he presented himself as Steve Ross, an artist and oil painter in his own right. The inaugural workshop took place in Winchester, Indiana, in 2019, where attendees gathered massively for a four-day event hosted at the fellowship hall of Faith United Methodist Church, thus welcoming Steve back into the spotlight.