"[Bob] Ross’s hair, a holdover from the free-love era, wasn’t naturally curly—he had it permed every few months, a process that he called having his 'springs tightened.'"

"As a nature-loving aesthete, he didn’t seem to have much mind for business matters, which, for better or worse, he left up to the Kowalskis. The documentary treats him as a spiritual healer, somewhere in the family of the Dalai Lama, but it’s more accurate to place him alongside Julia Child, Richard Simmons, and other lovable oddballs who found a niche in mass media and burrowed their way into popular culture.”

From "What’s Revealed in 'Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed'/A new Netflix documentary explores the fraught legacy of Bob Ross and his happy little trees" (The New Yorker).

I watched a bit of the documentary, but I turned it off. The "true crime" style is ludicrous. The lurid "Betrayal & Greed" just refers to marketing the Bob Ross brand after his death. 

Do I need to know about "the Kowalskis"? I think not. But here's a quote from Annette Kowalski describing Bob Ross's technique — not painting technique, but his speaking-while-painting technique — “He pretends like he’s talking to one woman in bed. He practiced. He was trying to be a little sexy.”