I have just been horrible to someone on the Gallery. I wasn't going to be; I tried biting my tongue, sitting on my hands, going away and slicing chips for supper but..... it had to come out. There was a painting which I saw in thumbnail. The second I saw it, it screamed Bob-bloody-Ross. Of its kind, it was fine. But I have seen so many of these paintings now, and I'm always horrified by the direction in which the Ross method takes people new to painting. Doesn't matter if it's Ross's own videos, or the (also late) Bill Alexander, or the engaging Daryl Crow - every one of them looks the same. The trees are all of no species known to man, the generic tree that painters used to insert in landscapes before they got round to going out and looking at them; the mountains, the water, the foliage, the grasses - they are all done by a method; by a trick; and it's always the same trick, and so the results are always, no exceptions ever, immediately recognizable. There is no room in the Ross method for the individual style of the artist to come through; indeed, it can't. There is a right way to do things, and you're taught it by "certified Bob Ross instructors", who proudly put CRI after their names as if they've been through an academic course. But of course, they haven't. They have just bought in, either literally or metaphorically, to the approved method. They have produced paintings such as might have been produced by their patron saint; and they pass on the creed to others, usually by saying things like "anyone can paint" - they play on ambition and in my view they then subvert it. I don't for a mini-second suppose that they, or Bob Ross in his time, did this deliberately. They aren't trying to stifle talent; they're trying as best they can and as best they know to liberate it. And I also don't doubt that Bob Ross was a good and kindly man who achieved much in his life; but what he did not achieve was any genuine proficiency as a painter. He produced the same painting a thousand times; he was a production line; and those who sign up to his methods and his "instructors" are just churning out more models of the same old jalopy. Yes, anyone can paint, if they really want to. But for Heaven's sake, make your paintings your own! What is the attraction to anyone, even if you can sell them in their scores, in painting the same way as someone else, replicating countless paintings of the same nowhere-land vistas? I know I'm going to be told that Bob Ross brought "a lot of pleasure" to people, that I shouldn't deny it to them, "what's wrong with short-cuts" etc - and I'm sure you'll all be right. Painting this way can bring and give pleasure - but I still say that it's nowhere near the pleasure you can gain, and not within light years of it, by going your own way and painting your own way. I daresay Mantovani brought pleasure, too; so did Tretchikoff and his Green Lady, who disfigured so many domestic interiors in the 60s and 70s; so does this appalling American "painter of light" whose name thankfully eludes me, but whose work takes the chocolate box concept and pours layers of sugar, honey, nougat and fudge all over it. I have no problem with pleasure; I like it, and embrace it keenly to my bosom whenever possible. But achievement matters too; and there is next to none in any facet of the Bob Ross method; as I haven't been anything like unpopular enough lately, I thought it was up to me to say so. I am sorry I had to pick on one unfortunate artist, but I hope if she's annoyed it will prompt her to prove me wrong by doing something of her own that is original and different. And in the meantime, I am going into hiding.