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Posted on 04/06/2012 8:34:22 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
Thomas Kinkade, the "Painter of Light" and one of most popular artists in America, died suddenly Friday at his Los Gatos home. He was 54.
His family said in a statement that his death appeared to be from natural causes.
"Thom provided a wonderful life for his family,'' his wife, Nanette, said in a statement. "We are shocked and saddened by his death.''
His paintings are hanging in an estimated 1 of every 20 homes in the United States. Fans cite the warm, familiar feeling of his mass-produced works of art, while it has become fashionable for art critics to dismiss his pieces as tacky. In any event, his prints of idyllic cottages and bucolic garden gates helped establish a brand -- famed for their painted high lights -- not commonly seen in the art world.
"I'm a warrior for light," Kinkade told the Mercury News in 2002, alluding not just to his technical skill at creating light on canvas but to the medieval practice of using light to symbolize the divine. "With whatever talent and resources I have, I'm trying to bring light to penetrate the darkness many people feel."
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Sorry for his passing.
His “art” was vapid and sophomoric.
WOW! May God rest his soul in peace. Prayers for the family.
I am so sorry. May he rip.
He was a customer at my wife’s salon. Looked pretty out of shape.
The one thing I always noted about his paintings was how much I wanted to live in the places he painted.
RIP Mr. Kinkade
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I love looking at his paintings.
RIP
Wow. Pretty young to die. Condolences to his family.
He knew the market
Perhaps it was. However, since he as an artist created works that I enjoy looking at, he was by definition a successful one. And his art, succeeded in touching something in another person. Love it or hate it, it is indeed art.
” He read classic books but also enjoyed shooting and blowing up things on his ranch.”
Couldn’t be all bad with those hobbies!
Thom Kinkade was a pretty interesting fellow.
From Wiki:
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The Los Angeles Times has reported that some of Kinkade’s former colleagues, employees, and even collectors of his work say that he has a long history of cursing and heckling other artists and performers. The Times further reported that he openly groped a woman’s breasts at a South Bend, Indiana sales event, and mentioned his proclivity for ritual territory marking through urination, once relieving himself on a Winnie the Pooh figure at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim while saying “This one’s for you, Walt.” In a letter to licensed gallery owners acknowledging he may have behaved badly during a stressful time when he overindulged in food and drink, Kinkade said accounts of the alcohol-related incidents included “exaggerated, and in some cases outright fabricated personal accusations.” The letter did not address any incident specifically.
In 2006 John Dandois, Media Arts Group executive, recounted a story that on one occasion (”about six years ago”) Kinkade became drunk at a Siegfried & Roy magic show in Las Vegas and began shouting “Codpiece! Codpiece!” at the performers. Eventually he was calmed by his mother. Dandois also said of Kinkade, “Thom would be fine, he would be drinking, and then all of a sudden, you couldn’t tell where the boundary was, and then he became very incoherent, and he would start cussing and doing a lot of weird stuff.” On 11 June 2010, Kinkade was arrested in Carmel, California on suspicion of driving while under the influence of alcohol.
You sure sound like a liberal when you say that.
Thomas Kinkade was only 54? If I’d had to guess, I would have picked late sixties, minimum.
Indeed he did. I wish I had his entrepreneurial talent. Perhaps that's why "critics" dismissed his art? Can't say. I only know that the ubiquitous galleries of his "masterpieces" seemed to diminish his work rather than enhance it.
What an arrogant and nasty comment. Shame on you, but these words are wasted. You are so full of yourself.
The Los Angeles Times has reported that some of Kinkade’s former colleagues, employees, and even collectors of his work say that he has a long history of cursing and heckling other artists and performers. The Times further reported that he openly groped a woman’s breasts at a South Bend, Indiana sales event, and mentioned his proclivity for ritual territory marking through urination, once relieving himself on a Winnie the Pooh figure at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim while saying “This one’s for you, Walt.” In a letter to licensed gallery owners acknowledging he may have behaved badly during a stressful time when he overindulged in food and drink, Kinkade said accounts of the alcohol-related incidents included “exaggerated, and in some cases outright fabricated personal accusations.” The letter did not address any incident specifically.
In 2006 John Dandois, Media Arts Group executive, recounted a story that on one occasion (”about six years ago”) Kinkade became drunk at a Siegfried & Roy magic show in Las Vegas and began shouting “Codpiece! Codpiece!” at the performers. Eventually he was calmed by his mother. Dandois also said of Kinkade, “Thom would be fine, he would be drinking, and then all of a sudden, you couldn’t tell where the boundary was, and then he became very incoherent, and he would start cussing and doing a lot of weird stuff.” On 11 June 2010, Kinkade was arrested in Carmel, California on suspicion of driving while under the influence of alcohol.
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Sounds a lot like an artist/creative type.
Ping!
His "vapid and sophomoric" art is loved by many people, not for being deemed worthy by people such as you, but for its simple goodness. It is soothing to the soul in a way that other art isn't. It's not magnificent like a Renoir or Klee or Rembrandt but instead is what I liken to an innocent child.
RIP, Thomas Kinkade.
Yep.
>>His “art” was vapid and sophomoric.<<
I see you know as much about art as you do taxation and economics.
You really should go back to DU/KOS and not spew your filth and hate here.
I’m sad for his family and their loss.
That said, he is going to have an incredible Easter.
So you’re the two on the site that everyone told me about.
LOL
I could maybe see such a comment for an obvious enemy, but really? The guy employed a lot of people up and down the line, and contributed to the economy, and a lot of people enjoyed what he made.
Or is there some other reason you just had to slip that in? Maybe you don’t like people who discuss their work in the context of their faith?
Kincaid's Painting
Watch it, pal! He was a Rembrandt and Beethoven to the local flea market art con-a-sewers!
I’m an art historian by education and have worked as a consultant to private parties seeking to buy art works.
I alway tell my clients to buy art that they love rather than what they think will be an investment.
Buying for investment purposes sounds good in general, but the reality is having to pass by something daily that you may come to hate. Buy what you love.
That said, I always told them that they should buy the best that an artist produced. Whenever someone insisted on buying Kinkade, I tried to direct them to his early work in oils, as that is considered his best work. If nothing was available on the market at that time, I would suggest Maxfield Parrish.
Never, never, never buy something called a ‘collectible’ anything! It is a waste of you money and has little to no resale value.
>>His “vapid and sophomoric” art is loved by many people, not for being deemed worthy by people such as you, but for its simple goodness.<<
drango, like so many of his liberal ilk, thinks of himself as an effete, but his words betray him as a child in a museum repeating lessons his mommy taught him that to colored dots on an orange background is “intellectual” while comforting and lovely art is for the proletariat.
As always, the liberals who root for the masses on the sidelines are snobbish elite - the self-appointed Bourgeois who won’t even accept the irony of that designation. Not only that but they are the priggish elite with no sense of taste at all. But they buy into the base shucksterism of fast talking “artists” who possess not a whit of talent. Which is hilarious when you see a $250,000 painting over their mantle that is new-age schlock.
We almost need drango here as an example for our children of what not to be.
? Seriously?? I didn't care for his art and you extrapolate that into me not caring for his art in the context of his faith? Overreach much??
Sounds like alcohol-induced bipolar behavior, or Tourettes.
Sounds like he had his own personal demons. His general life, he seems to have been able to fight them off pretty well.
As for the ‘codpiece’ comment at Siegfried and Roy, well, c’mon, they were probably just excited to see each other. Are we sure Sig and Roy weren’t the ones asking for a codpiece?, or that one they were wearing fell off into the audience?
RIP
I loved all his paintings.
Art has had her revenge on schlock. He had so many utterly dopey paintings, such as the one below, of buildings improbably placed feet away from mountain streams (all ready to be flooded come spring thaw) with no visible means of vehicular or sometimes even pedestrian approach or parking (such as one painting of a church in a similar sylvan setting plopped down as though having been dropped into the scene from a UFO after a bizarre case of churchnapping). I’ve seen some of these paintings in person, so to speak, at Focus on the Family headquarters in Colorado as well as the for-sale-to-Kinkade-”art”-lovers-hankering-for-a-piece-of-his-talent genuine canvas-grained reproductions (in the FOTF gift shop) upon which the artist personally dabbed a bit of paint. For all of his supposed wonderful luminosity, just go to some museum such as The Art Institute of Chicago and look at real paintings by real artists who had taken the time to master technique rather than market minimum competence paintings to the masses starved by op and pop and yearning for a little representationalism.
I loved his paintings. Well, most of them. RIP, Sir.
That is hilarious. I laughed out loud.
Add to that inept. Just look at the light and shadows and the wind direction in these “art works”. As to being a good capitalist, just ask the broke owners of the galleries that sold his “paintings” and nothing else, which were really prints with dashes of paint thrown on them by the slave workers in his factory.
Thanks, I’d rather buy an original of an velvet Elvis.
Hahaja ...
Oh, shame on him for painting for the ‘dregs’. What a snob.
Yep!
He was also quite good at self promotion, as in the example of the Thomas Kinkade galleries that popped up like franchises in all the better custom frame shops in every town of any note at all.
Suffice it to say, there are equal or greater artistic talents doing greeting cards for Hallmark, but you don't see anyone clamoring to call their efforts “art.”
You'd be far better served buying antique animation cells from Disney classics, from an investment standpoint. Pretty much the same vibe as Kinkade, too, when you get right down to it. I always expect to see little elves or Bambi cavorting around somewhere in a Kinkade print anyway.
Kinkade was the Danielle Steel of painting!
I could never get past the illogic of his work. Very much like romance novels, with their formula plots recycled over and over again. I guess some people like that kind of thing. And I'll not do anything to keep it from them.
How much for the Kinthulu original?
I alway tell my clients to buy art that they love rather than what they think will be an investment.
I LOVE that middle painting!!
Do you have it in a double wide ?
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