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Piccolo Tent at Assembly – George Square

The Bob Ross Effect

The Bob Ross Effect, at Piccolo Tent, Assembly George Square Gardens, is Sarah-Louise Young’s love letter to the man with the perm and the happy little trees. Except it’s not really about Bob Ross at all, not in the way you’d expect. It’s about art, grief, friendship and what it means to make something with your hands when the world feels too big to hold.

Sarah-Louise takes you through parts of her own life and the way art has threaded through it, and the heart of the show is her friendship with Lynn Ruth Miller, a fellow artist who painted constantly. They grew close, close enough that by the end of Lynn’s life, Sarah-Louise had become her next of kin. She was there with her right to the end. At Lynn’s memorial, everyone who came took a piece from her vast collection home with them, which is such a beautiful way to send someone off.

I won’t get into the mechanics of the show itself because it would spoil it, but you get handed a clipboard, paper and crayons, and over the course of the hour you end up drawing things without quite realising how it all comes together. I drew a jellyfish that somehow ended up on the big screen behind her, to a chorus of oohs and aahs from the room, which was a genuinely fun moment. Bryan, meanwhile, produced a forest devoid of all life. Make of that what you will.

At one point she asked me if I paint, and I do, purely as a hobby, purely for fun, no illusions about being any good at it. It’s a small moment but it stuck with me, because that’s kind of the whole point of the show. You don’t have to be brilliant. You just have to do it.

Sarah-Louise has a lovely singing voice and she tells her story with real warmth, taking the whole room along with her without ever tipping into mawkish. It’s funny, it’s sad, and it somehow makes you want to go home and pick up a paintbrush.

Four stars out of five. We’re on a real run of strong shows so far.