Pop Culture
Magenta Borealis grew up on Long Island watching PBS, and Bob Ross was part of the lineup.
“I’d love when he would come on and just watch and do his thing,” she said.
Borealis, 36, said she hadn’t touched art in years and was trying to get back into it. On Saturday, she sat at an easel on the third-base side of Maimonides Park in Coney Island for the Brooklyn Cyclones’ Bob Ross Night.
The Cyclones billed the evening as “a Happy Little Ballgame,” with an add-on package that put fans at easels in the 3B Picnic Area for a Bob Ross-style paint-along with a Certified Ross Instructor.
The instructor was Lauren Pantos, an elementary school art teacher. Pantos said she found the certification by accident while looking for a Bob Ross quote for a classroom bulletin board.
“I did a quick Google for Bob Ross quotes and stumbled upon ‘become Bob Ross certified,’” she said. “And I was like, there is no way. This has to be a joke.”
Pantos said she called the number, learned it was real, and spent three weeks at an intensive painting course in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Students had to pass each week to be invited back.
She said she has taught paint-alongs on PBS in Buffalo during the pandemic and at events around the Northeast.
“I always say that Bob brings me the coolest people. Like, never did I think I’d be teaching at a Cyclones ball game,” she said.
“I’m constantly surprised by the bizarre requests I get to host Bob Ross nights. And love it. I just love every moment.”
Cherie Rosen, 49, a special education teacher from Kew Gardens, Queens, said she considers herself “crafty, not really artistic.” She came with her husband, Benjamin Rosen, 48, a supervisor for the Transportation Security Administration at the airport.
“There are no mistakes, just happy accidents,” Cherie Rosen said. “That’s how you have to live life.”
She said she probably wouldn’t paint again on her own but would take another class like this one. She thought Ross would have taken to the crowd.
“It’s very community-based,” Cherie Rosen said. “Those that come to Brooklyn Cyclones, it’s all families and usually local—either Brooklyn or Queens—that comes here. And he seems like he would have really enjoyed that.”
The painters did not get bobbleheads, which went to the first 2,000 fans through the gates. She said she thought they should have.
“I kind of thought, you know, those of us that did this should have gotten a bobblehead,” she said.
Benjamin Rosen said his wife’s painting turned out better than his. He said the appeal started when he was a kid, with “his whole ensemble with the hair, the squirrel and a little eccentric.”
“I always use the happy little tree at work and I use all that as a reference about life and make everything a happy little tree,” he said.
Borealis said she had read up on Ross’ life — his years in the Air Force, the love of nature he found while stationed in Alaska, and losses he painted through.
“He used art to heal through his struggle,” she said. “Every time he painted, he would say, ‘Don’t worry about how it’ll look. Just do it. Just go for it.’”
Borealis said that was the part that stuck with her — that Ross made painting feel open to anyone.
“You don’t have to be the most amazing artist doing super realistic things,” she said. “Hey, you can make a landscape.”
Ross died in 1995. His paintings have sold for record sums three decades later.
In January, a trio of his works brought in more than $1 million at Bonhams to benefit public media, Artnet News reported at the time. His 1990 work Change of Seasons led that sale at $787,900, more than 13 times its high estimate.
His 1987 painting Cabin at Sunset set an auction record of $1.04 million in a sale hosted by the comedian John Oliver, also for public media, Artnet News reported. The sales followed federal funding for public broadcasting being cut by $1.1 billion in 2025 and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting voting to dissolve.
And The Joy of Painting still airs on public television — the stations where Borealis and the Rosens said they first found Ross.
Pantos was asked whether Ross would have wanted his name on a minor-league promotion.
“His whole thing was that he wants to share the joy of painting,” she said. “I think that if he knew the joy of painting was being shared to a whole baseball stadium, he would love that.”
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