Thomas Kinkade, whose sun-bathed paintings of cottages and other idyllic settings turned into a multimillion-dollar empire, died yesterday at age 54. A family spokesman said Kinkade died in his home in Los Gatos, California, in the Bay Area, of natural causes.
The AP's obituary explains, "Artist Thomas Kinkade once said that he had something in common with Walt Disney and Norman Rockwell: He wanted to make people happy.... He claimed to be the nation's most collected living artist, and his paintings and spin-off products were said to fetch some $100 million a year in sales, and to be in 10 million homes in the United States. Those light-infused renderings are often prominently displayed in buildings, malls, and on products — generally depicting tranquil scenes with lush landscaping and streams running nearby. Many contain images from Bible passages."
Kinkade called himself the "Painter of Light," saying, "I'm a warrior for light. With whatever talent and resources I have, I'm trying to bring light to penetrate the darkness many people feel." However, Kinkade and his associates created a money-making machine from "light," by offering his paintings through galleries operated by franchisees, some of whom accused Kinkade and management of ruining them. A lawyer for dealers who successfully won a $860,000 judgement from the firm managing Kinkade's empire said, "Most of my clients got involved with Kinkade because it was presented as a religious opportunity/ Being defrauded is awful enough, but doing it in the name of God is really despicable."
Being a businessman, Kinkade also tackled less pastoral subjects, from the old Yankee Stadium to the Indianapolis Speedway. He described the process for the Speedway painting, "The passion I have is to capture memories, to evoke the emotional connection we have to an experience. I came out here and stood up on the bleachers and looked around, and I saw all the elements of the track. It was empty at the time. But I saw the stadium, how the track laid out, the horizon, the skyline of Indianapolis and the Pagoda. I saw it all in my imagination. I began thinking, 'I want to get this energy — what I call the excitement of the moment — into this painting.' As I began working on it, I thought, 'Well you have this big piece of asphalt, the huge spectator stands; I've got to do something to get some movement.' So I just started throwing flags into it. It gives it kind of a patriotic excitement."
Joan Didion once wrote of Kinkade's work, "A Kinkade painting was typically rendered in slightly surreal pastels. It typically featured a cottage or a house of such insistent coziness as to seem actually sinister, suggestive of a trap designed to attract Hansel and Gretel. Every window was lit, to lurid effect, as if the interior of the structure might be on fire."
