Bill Alexander: The Fire, the Paint, and the Power of a Happy Buck

Hope Blakely
Nov 6
7 min read

Updated: Nov 12

Let me tell you a story about a man who changed painting forever — long before the name Bob Ross ever filled our TV screens. His name was Bill Alexander, and if you’ve ever watched a mountain rise on canvas in half an hour, or heard the words “fire in!” echo across a room, you’ve already met his spirit.

Bill wasn’t calm and quiet like Bob. No, Bill Alexander was fire. He was bold, messy, joyful, and alive. He painted with the strength of a blacksmith and the heart of a poet — and he made the world believe that anyone could paint.

From Prussia to Paint

Bill Alexander was born Wilhelm Alexander on April 2, 1915, in East Prussia. Life was hard then — real hard. In his book The Bill Alexander Story (published in 1983 by Kendall Hunt Publishing Company of Dubuque, Iowa), he tells how his father was killed when he was pushed in front of a train, and how his mother died soon after from tuberculosis.

Can you imagine? A little boy, suddenly alone. But Bill had something inside him — that creative spark he always talked about later in life. He made fiddles by hand and played them, sold rabbit furs for fifty cents apiece, and learned to survive the only way he knew how — by creating.

He apprenticed with a leathermaker named Henry, while one brother learned butchering and another cheesemaking. And somewhere in there, at a little normal school that taught trades and crafts, Bill picked up a brush. That’s where it all started — the spark that turned into a flame.

War, Love, and a New Beginning

Before the war, Bill met a young woman named Margaret, and two years later they had a daughter named Heidi. When war came, he was drafted, and in the middle of all that chaos, he still found time to paint — portraits of officers, glimpses of peace on canvas while the world fell apart around him.

After the war, he couldn’t go home right away. He painted wherever he landed, traded pictures for food, met strangers, kept moving forward. Eventually, word came — his wife and daughter were alive. And with a heart full of hope, he went to find them.

In 1952, Bill finally made it to Canada. He went first, and one of his students later helped bring his family over. He started over from scratch, painting in the sporting-goods section at Hudson’s Bay Company in Montreal, catching people’s eyes between fishing poles and tackle boxes.

And he said something I’ll never forget:

“Too many people think that artists should suffer because they are artists. Painting, to me, is a happy time, a powerful time.”

That line stuck with me. I believe that too. Painting isn’t about misery — it’s about joy.

The Birth of Magic White

Bill was always searching for better paint — something that would let him work faster and blend colors right on the canvas. He tried every kind of oil and medium he could find, but nothing felt right. The paint would crack, or yellow, or dry too quickly.

Then, one day in Seattle, he met a chemist who helped him discover a saffron oil from Africa that changed everything. It didn’t yellow. It stayed wet longer. It was perfect.

He called it Magic White No. 1, and that was the secret behind his new wet-on-wet technique — the same method that would later sweep the world.

Now, if you’ve painted wet-on-wet before, you already know what came next. Bob Ross called it Liquid White, and today you’ll see it on store shelves as First Coat. All of them trace back to Bill’s Magic White.

“Fire In!” — Television’s First Happy Painter

In 1973, a television station in Huntington Beach, California — KOCE — called looking for something new for educational TV. They found Bill Alexander.

That’s how The Magic of Oil Painting began. Each week, Bill would step in front of the camera, slap that brush on a blank canvas, and in thirty minutes create a world. Mountains, trees, waterfalls — all with that booming German accent and his famous cry of, “Fire in!”

His show ran from 1974 to 1982 and even won an Emmy Award in 1980. But what Bill cared about most wasn’t the trophy — it was the people. The students who’d never painted before. The ones who suddenly believed they could.

“At some point I became more of a teacher than a painter,” he wrote. “What I want to do most now is share my techniques with everyone who might be interested.”

And he did.

The Student Who Became a Star

Now, this next part always makes people lean in. Among Bill’s many students was a young man named Bob Ross.

Bill taught him the wet-on-wet method, the energy, the belief that anyone could paint. Bob later called it “the most fantastic way to paint that you’ve ever seen.”

Their personalities couldn’t have been more different. Bill was loud and fiery — he’d slam that brush and laugh from his belly. Bob was gentle and calm, the kind voice that soothed a whole generation.

I’ve always told my own students that Bill was the stronger painter and teacher — but Bob’s demeanor made him unforgettable. He was television gold. Still, we wouldn’t have Bob Ross without Bill Alexander.

Whenever I teach a class, I always bring up Bill’s name. Most people don’t know who he is — and when I tell them that the “Bob Ross method” actually started with Bill, their eyes widen. They love that little secret.

And I always tell them, “We wouldn’t have Bob without Bill.”

The Stories and the Students

There’s a story in Bill’s book that I adore. It’s about a man named Bob — not necessarily Bob Ross, though I can’t help but wonder — who used to drop his wife off for class and then go drink at the bar until it was time to pick her up.

One rainy night he came in early, just to stay dry, and Bill said, “Why don’t you sit in? You’ve got a pretty wife; you don’t have to leave her here alone.”

That night, Bob watched. Then he picked up a brush. Then he came back again, and again, until he finally told Bill, “You’ve brainwashed me! I’m going to retire soon, build a little studio by a river, and paint for the rest of my life.”

Bill laughed and said, “You can do it — because tomorrow is in that painting, and there is always a better way tomorrow.”

That’s the kind of teacher he was. He could turn doubters into dreamers.

He used to say:

“You have to brainwash yourself. Convince yourself of your own creative power in order to get that better tomorrow.”

And my favorite —

“All life is filled with light and dark. We need one to appreciate the other.”

Those words are timeless.

The Rise, the Fall, and the Shift

By 1990, Bill’s company was booming — millions in TV and art instruction. But by 1994, it had been sold to an investment group that ran it into bankruptcy.

In 2008, Laurie Anderson stepped in, rebuilt it, and later brought in Tom Anderson as master artist. The name still says Alexander, but the direction is different now — a new chapter built on Bill’s foundation.

Fire in the Heart

Bill believed that creativity wasn’t something rare — it was in everyone.

“Creative power is more than just a painting you make or a tune you fiddle. It’s in building your home, building bridges, or building skyscrapers. Creative power is like water pressure — it’s always there inside you; you just have to draw it up.”

Artist Dana Jester told me that when he painted across from Bill at trade shows, Bill was “just as excited and bubbly in person as he was on the show.” Dana remembered that back then, Bill’s paintings sold for about $200 apiece.

Another artist, Bram Bevins, who paints in the Bob Ross style, bought a 24×36 Bill Alexander painting for $500 — said he got it cheap! At one point he’d picked up three of them for $50 each.

And one of Bram’s students, Connie Ballard Deaver, said it best:

“Ken and I enjoy watching Bill Alexander. He was passionate and enthusiastic and we like his work very much! His episodes are entertaining and his personality explodes from the screen! I like the calm of Bob Ross and the fire of Bill Alexander equally.”

That’s exactly it. The calm and the fire.

The Man Who Didn’t Paint Modern

Now this next part really made me smile. Near the end of his book, Bill talks about modern art.

He said people often asked him to paint something modern, and he always turned them down. “To me,” he wrote, “modern art is an argument.”

He described how a person comes home after a hard day — the boss yelling, traffic honking, the radio blaring — and then looks at a modern painting full of drips and squares and can’t even tell if it’s a cow, a shoe, or a bear.

“You have to have nerves of steel to get through the day,” he said, “and you have to have nerves of steel to enjoy your modern painting.”

That one made me laugh out loud, because I feel the same way. I’ve never connected with modern, abstract, or surrealist art. But creating something real, something you can picture in your mind — that makes sense to me. And it made sense to Bill too.

The Happy Buck and the Boat Named Magic

Bill even had a whole chapter called The Happy Buck — about making a living from painting. Funny enough, Bob Ross later used that same phrase all the time.

And in his later years, Bill lived near Powell Lake in British Columbia, where he kept a little boat he named Magic. I love that — the man who brought magic to millions had a boat named after it.

Why Bill Alexander Still Matters

Bill Alexander passed away in 1997, but his spark is still alive every time someone picks up a brush for the first time and believes they can paint.

He gave the world more than a technique — he gave it permission. Permission to try, to create, and to find joy in the process.

Bill Alexander was the original happy painter — the fire that lit the calm.And for every student who’s ever painted along, he’s still there somewhere, smiling behind the canvas, whispering: