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Presione
aqui para
Alexander Cruz's public
statement about the Netflix
documentary
As many of you know, I am one of
Bob Ross's certified instructors
since 1992 and took several
seminars and classes of
completed works with Bob Ross
himself. I was at the first CRI
meeting in Daytona Beach, FL,
the only CRI’s meeting that Bob
Ross attended. Fortunately, I
had the opportunity to meet him
and, in addition of being my
teacher and mentor, to be able
to call him my friend. I was
only 17 years old when I met him
but with his grace and fatherly
tenderness, he adopted me as one
of his own. He never missed an
opportunity to give me positive
advice and put big dreams in my
head. From all our
conversations, I will always
remember what he wanted from me,
which was to keep the dream of
painting and the hope of
becoming an oasis for all the
new talents in painting. “Anybody
can paint” he told me, “but
with instructors like you it can
be better achieved.” Since
then, I have maintained with
honor and respect the desire of
my teacher to continue awakening
the interest in the art of
painting of thousands of people.
My certification began in 1992
and since then, I have worked
day by day with all my love and
dedication thanks to the
motivations I received from my
mentor, Bob Ross. During this
certification I also had the joy
of meeting his talented son,
Steve Ross, and Dana Jester.
They also made me part of their
friends immediately. Because I
was so young, the three of them
welcomed me as if I were the
group's mascot, their little
brother or their son. Both Dana
and Bob fondly called me “Felix
the Cat” and corrected my
attempts to speak English. They
were my defenders, my friends.
I felt at home with relatives
when I was with them, always
taking care of me and guiding me
all the way.
When Bob died, my pain was as
great as if a father had died
for me.
I mourned him for a long time
and every time I see a video
where he waves goodbye, those
feelings of loss are awakened.
It was so much that I stopped
painting for six months.
Everything I saw and all his
products with his face made me
remember him. Until one day I
remembered the words my teachers
told me that kept going around
and around inside my head. I
realized that for his memory to
continue I had to continue
changing lives towards art as
the three of them taught me,
especially Bob.
When I returned to my hometown
with this new "Wet on Wet"
painting technique,
I was criticized by many
traditionalist artists who
always saw this technique as a
threat instead of seeing it as a
way of artistic growth. Thanks
to these criticisms, I continued
studying various other
traditional techniques with
various teachers such as Daniel
E. Greene, Dana Jester (Bob's
best friend) among others, and I
completed my university degree
with a Bachelor of Visual Arts.
After so much study and
mastering the art of oil
painting, I have developed
several collections of paintings
that have led me to be in
international magazines, in
museums and galleries,
convention centers, etc. where I
have promoted my art but never
without forgetting that promise
I made to my teacher Norman
Robert Ross.
After the death of Bob Ross,
many of us thought that Steve
was going to continue with the
company, but he did not. Many
of the National Staff teachers
wanted Steve to continue but
Annette never saw him as sales
material and what she wanted was
to keep the Bob Ross brand
intact without sharing it with
his son. Because of this
decision, many of the original
teachers, faithful to Bob Ross,
withdrew from the company. Even
Dana Jester, not with BRI
anymore, continued to offer
painting workshops in
traditional techniques by
painting animals. I took
several multi-week seminars in
New Jersey, Tennessee and where
Dana went, I followed him.
During this time, an interest
in painting animals awoke and
one of my classmates was Bea
Cox. This person, who also took
classes with Dana, (who I called
Annette's spy) was the one who
brought this theme to Annette
Kowalski who also wanted to
steal the idea of making a
color line and brushes on the
subject of wildlife by making a
few changes to Dana's technique.
They created acrylic bases to
make the "under paintings"
instead of doing everything in
oil as Dana taught us. That's
where they got the wildlife oil
paint tubes under the name Bob
Ross Soft. I don't know what
happened to Bea Cox and her
works that started this new
technique, but I never saw her
name on the works or in the
company again.
The friendship I had with Dana
Jester was so great that for
2004, 2005 and 2010 I invited
him to Puerto Rico to offer
painting seminars on wildlife
using traditional techniques.
Dana had been working on these
techniques before he met Bob and
he managed to have my admiration
for how well they were
performed. During these seminars
in Puerto Rico, Dana and I were
able to teach more than 100
students.
This solidified our friendship
to the point that when I visited
Denver, Colorado for a NAMTA
show I visited his home. During
this visit I ended up buying
several works by Dana and had
many long conversations about
our friend Bob. He told me that
he wanted to make a book telling
everything that had happened,
his memories and everything that
the Kowalskis put him through.
This desire of bringing
everything out into the open was
always on Steve and Dana's minds
but it wasn't until several
years later that Dennis Kapp's
son, CEO of Martin F. Weber,
entered the equation, Lawrence
Kapp, who was also suffering
from the fact that Joan Kowalski
had sent a "divorce" letter to
the MFW company and he and many
employees would be left
unemployed due to the sale of
the MFW company. Approximately
50% of the MFW Company's sales
were from the production and
distribution of Bob Ross
materials which, up to that
point, were created under the
specifications of Bob Ross. This
was the moment where Mr. Dennis
Kapp, already an elderly person
and being ill, decided to sell
the company to Chartpak.
After the death of Bob, the
Kowalskis tried to make many
changes in the quality of the
products, meeting resistance
from the MFW company, creating
conflicts in the business
relationships they had. MFW
executives on several occasions
consulted with several of Bob
Ross' friends taking into
consideration the integrity and
respect we had for Bob. “What
do you think Ross would think of
this?” They told me every
time the Kowalskis came up with
an absurd idea. They even did a
"Bob Ross Paint by Number" as an
attempt to make more money
marketing the Bob Ross name but
it was all a loss. It did not
get public appreciation for
being so cheap and of poor
quality. I remember telling
them when they came up with this
idea, “In and of itself, the
Wet on Wet Painting technique
has been criticized by
traditionalists and on top of
that they want to sell Paint by
Number, something that has had
little respect in the art world.
That is a very bad idea! That
would damage Bob Ross's name.”
Still, by demands of the
Kowalskis it was done. They
also made 4 puzzles out of four
Bob Ross paintings which were
also unsuccessful. Always trying
to get money from his brand;
that was always Bob Ross for the
Kowalskis and it was seen from
miles away to this day.
In 2010, I signed
with the Martin F. Weber company
to make a series of educational
DVDs with step-by-step
instructions for creating bird
paintings. I had the
opportunity to meet Mr. Dennis
Kapp and his son Lawrence Kapp.
Two people completely
passionate and oriented to the
art business but with different
visions who became very good
friends. I traveled to
Frankfurt, Germany for three
consecutive years to promote
Weber DVDs and products. I met
and became good friends with Mr.
Michael Gorak, President of MFW.
I shared many dinners and long
conversations with all of them
and learned a lot from them and
from all the stories related to
Bob, Many with evidence and
witnesses of things that had
happened.
During art shows in Germany and
the United States, I shared a
room with Gorak and Lawrence
Kapp. They were my roommates to
save the company an extra room.
Those were weeks
of hard but rewarding work as we
made many new contacts and
businesses. Thanks to these
shows, many of MFW's clients
hired me to do workshops in
different parts of the world.
These shows helped me to travel
to Spain, the United States and
especially two tours in Taiwan
of 20 days each, where I had the
opportunity to teach hundreds of
students and get to know more
than 6 large cities in this
beautiful country.
For a long time, the idea of
finding another artist in the
MFW company, who would make the
same sales that Bob Ross had
gotten them, was on Dennis
Kapp's mind. He knew that if
something like this was done it
had to be by himself and not
through the Bob Ross Company.
That is why, in search of this
other artist to fill those shoes
Dennis approached me and said, “I
want you to be the next Bob Ross”.
But to this
I replied, “I
want to be Alexander Cruz, not
Bob Ross. I respect my teacher
so much that I don't want to be
his imitator”. Of course,
now I understood what he meant.
He wanted to create other
artists and make them famous to
create sales of materials just
like they did with Bob. The
Kapp had several future plans
for the company, most notably
Lawrence, who was to be Dennis
Kapp's successor. He had many
dreams and plans for the future
of MFW but they were shattered
when his father decided to sell
because of the loss of business
that Joan Kowalski took from MFW.
I've always said,
"If it's not broken, why fix
it!" A saying a former MFW
employee taught me. Already the
MFW company had everything
running on four wheels. They had
the production and distribution
of all Bob Ross products, but
years of business lacerations
and Joan Kowalskis ambition
caused her to make a very wrong
decision which had dire
consequences for both Bob Ross
Inc. and Martin F. Weber and all
the artists that were inside MFW.
When Chartpak bought MFW, they
took out more than 80% of the
products that MFW sold including
all their artists: Susan Scheewe,
Donna Dewberry, Bruce Blitz,
John Howard Sanden and myself,
Alexander Cruz among others.
This decision affected the
businesses of several people but
that is not surprising since
from the beginning the Kowalskis
have always had that culture of
hurting the businesses of others
for them to be in charge. Crush
the weakest to profit and sell
what they want; the mentality of
“quítate tú
para ponerme yo”
"get out of my way, so I can
take over"
a very famous
saying in Puerto Rico.
Many years ago,
they got the Jenkins out of the
race by stealing their business
ideas and trying to get them off
even television. There are many
Jenkins stories that were not
told in this Netflix documentary
but that many of us know and
resent because of how greedy and
malicious the Kowalskis were
against the Jenkins. Those
stories will come out to the
public but not in a documentary
that talks about Bob Ross. Both
Gary and Katherine Jenkins have
the same right to tell their
stories and bring them out into
the open as Steve and Dana. The
Jenkins were the most affected
in all this by the Kowalskis. I
was very happy to have seen them
in the Bob Ross documentary on
Netflix but the truth is that
they did not get the almost 4
hours of interview they did with
them. They only got 2% of
everything they said according
to what Katherine told me.
As for this documentary that
came out on Netflix, there is no
doubt that everyone who spoke
and everything they said is 100%
real and true. Now a Pandora's
box has just been opened and in
the next few days we are going
to see the Kowalskis (I don't
like to call them the Bob Ross
Company) trying to do damage
control. Now they are posing as
saints saying all the good they
have done in order to allude to
the feelings of all of us who
really follow Bob Ross' dream
using words like "legacy" and
"memory." Those of us who knew
him know that Bob Ross would
never have left a "legacy" of
commerce where his image was
sold to the highest bidder, he
would never have left a "legacy"
where the company officials
ignored their true warriors that
we are, the CRIs, he would never
have left the "legacy" of
lowering the quality of their
materials to have a better
profit, and much less would have
left us with the "memory" of
abuse and outrage that the
Kowalskis did indeed leave, for
those who worked with them and
who until today have profited
with their name. I am not a
person to promote hatred but I
am a person to do justice.
Thanks to my entire artistic
career, I have earned the
prestige and reputation of being
a person of integrity and good
human principles. I have earned
the respect of thousands of
followers and the love of many
with whom I share this dream
that Bob Ross planted in my
heart.
For my part, I
will continue to be one of you,
a CRI teacher, but I will not
continue to support or promote
the sale of materials from the
Bob Ross company since they are
below student quality and above
all I will no longer support the
Kowalskis. They have failed all
the CRIs due to the lack of
communication, lack of respect,
their indifference to all the
demands that the CRIs themselves
have had. They have failed us
all. They should be ashamed
that they continue to use Bob
Ross name that is too big for
them. They failed Steve, Dana
Jester, the Jenkins, the Kapp
family, MFW, all their partners
and followers, their audience,
but worse still, they failed Bob
Ross who must be crying and in a
lot of pain with all the damage
that they have done to his
family. Shame on you
Kowalski!
Alexander Cruz, IAA
(International Ambassador Artist
by UNESCO)
CRI, CRFI, CRWI
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