The American sublime: Jaded art world gasps in amazement at American Christian landscape painters

WORLD ^ | 10/26/02 | Gene Edward Veith

[Liberty Valance]

American Art...Remington, James Taylor, the Dixie Chicks, Frank Loyd Wright, Dubya ...:o) God I love this country!

[CyberAnt]

If ya'll like this type of picture, you should take a look at Kincaid pictures. I think some of the larger malls have his galleries. He specializes in pictures with unual lighting. When you go into his galleries, they have it lighted to get the full effect of the picture; but what I love is the casual seating throughout the gallery, making it comfortable to take the time to sit and stare at the paintings. It's a lovely reprieve from the world.

His pictures just seem to be alive. My very favorite is a painting of the steep and narrow road which curves down a hill in San Francisco - the scene is at the top of the hill, with a breathtaking view of the skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge - I just can hardly take my eyes off it.

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

Morning in the Tropics - Frederic Church, 1877.

[CyberAnt]

unual lighting?? what is that ...

Ooops! unual = unusual

Sorry!

[uglybiker]

"Modern Art" finally exposed to be the fraud that it is!

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

"A Tropical Moonlight" by Frederic Church, 1874.

You've got to see it in person. The moon looks like a real moon! It's textured, and stands out from the painting.

Every time I see it, I feel as if I could walk right into the scene. It hypnotizes me.

This image is not save-able. It only saves in tiles. If there's a way of saving it in one piece, let me know.

Here's the site, if anybody would like to see it:

http://search.famsf.org/4d.acgi$Record?231268&=list&=1&=church%20frederic%20edwin&=And&=4&=0&=keywords&=Yes&=&=&=&=Yes&=&=f

[I've been working on this for hours. I hope the image stays up.]

[Aracelis]

I was thinking the same thing.

[xJones]

That is beautiful, thanks very much for your hard work. I read that it's at The Museums of Fine Art in San Francisco.

[AnAmericanMother]

I'm sorry, but I absolutely despise Kinkade. Like I said in a post above, his pictures "go no deeper than the paint." The lighting may be dramatic, but it's not accurate or realistic. By the time you have enough contrast to see that much light from within a house, you have lost the colors outdoors, and you don't lose colors in the same order - the bright ones go first. Go out into a sunset and look at an illuminated house from 100 yards down the road, and you'll see what I mean. Kinkade hasn't LOOKED at what he's painting. Here's a good (or bad) example:

Here's the effect that you REALLY get. "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose." Note how the reds have dropped out, and how dark the shadows are. John Singer Sargent could only paint for 5 minutes a day on this picture, when the light was exactly right.

The thing that disturbs me the most about Kinkade is his inconsistent lighting, but he also has trouble with inconsistency in paint handling between the building and the landscape, with perspective (his view is flat and "scrunched") . . . and I notice that his later paintings are becoming imitative of a wide variety of artists, from impressionistic to HRS.

Here's an example of Kinkade TRYING to paint like Hudson River School:

Now here's the real thing (probably the picture he copied):

The unrealistic lighting and flat perspective of Kinkade are very noticeable.

Sorry for the art lesson . . . but there ARE "good" and "bad" in art, and they CAN be distinguished rationally.

[AnAmericanMother]

Looking over my post, I noticed something else that's wrong with Kinkade's light . . . multiple illumination points. It's very obvious in the Yosemite picture -- you can see from the cloud in the background that the sun is high, over the mountain, and producing typical late-afternoon gold sunlight from behind the cloud. Yet the mountains are illuminated as though in the setting sun, red-orange but fairly high, FROM THE FRONT. And the foreground is illuminated from yet another source, as though there were very low SUNSET light (red and orange) coming from somewhere over the viewer's right shoulder. Unless someone was standing there with a searchlight with a red gel on it . . . (g)

I will bet that Kinkade paints from photographs - MULTIPLE photographs. He's no plein-aire painter, that's for sure.

[Aquamarine]

This is very unnusual and beautiful. Some people wouldn't like the darkness of the painting and think it was too gloomy in their home but I would love to own this one.

I think the way to save it would be to put it in your own storage. You should have some free storage on your server or you could buy more storage.

[Aquamarine]

No matter what anyone thinks of him as a painter Thomas Kincaid paintings are very popular. I know a woman who is VERY frugal with her money that just spent $3000.00 dollars on one of his prints of a white church.
His paintings do make people look at them and they are attractive but there was always something about them that bothered me. The scenes don't look realistic, it's as if he combines an Irish countryside scene with California sunlight or other physical qualities. Maybe I'm a realist but I like to see a scene that is an actual place that I can imagine physially being in...either in my mind or actually being there one day. If he would stick with reality I may even pay $3000.00 for one of his paintings one day...but I doubt it.

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

I read that it's at The Museums of Fine Art in San Francisco.

Until they tore the museum down so that they could build a new earthquake-proof one.

Sometimes I used to go to the museum just to see that one painting. However, we also had the painting posted in #55, "Rainy Season in the Tropics". The size of that painting is really big - a huge canvas. But it just doesn't speak to me the way "A Tropical Moonlight" does.

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

This is very unnusual and beautiful. Some people wouldn't like the darkness of the painting and think it was too gloomy in their home but I would love to own this one.

It's an entrancing moonlit scene. It used to be hard to tear myself away from it.

I think the way to save it would be to put it in your own storage. You should have some free storage on your server or you could buy more storage.

Thanks for all of your help re posting pics. In order to save this image, I had to save it as 12 individual bitmap images. Then I can put them all together in Paint, and I will have the whole image. Unfortunately, I can't find this image anywhere else online, just at the SF museum site (URL in post #66).

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

The lighting may be dramatic, but it's not accurate or realistic ... his inconsistent lighting ... the unrealistic lighting ...

That's the whole point of his style. After all, he's known as the "Painter of Light".

He KNOWS he's not painting realistically. He's not trying to.

Good analysis, btw. You're very observant. How many people could pull up an example of what Kincaid is copying? You could write a book.

I read an article recently that said that Kincaid is rapidly falling out of favor. All of the people who like his work have already bought his paintings (or prints). There is nobody left who will buy them.

[Aquamarine]

Thanks for all of your help re posting pics. In order to save this image, I had to save it as 12 individual bitmap images.

You're welcome. To tell you the truth you know more about these individual bitmap images than I do. I'm glad that you knew how to work that out so you could post it here, it was well worth you efforts.

BTW...did you understand the active link info that I sent to you?

[Aquamarine]

Artistic ping!

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

you know more about these individual bitmap images than I do. I'm glad that you knew how to work that out so you could post it here

I saw it as a challenge! I knew there had to be a way of posting a tiled image, so I just experimented.

I used the "img src" which you taught me, then I just added the URLs of all 12 tiles. I copied the link of each tile, one after the other, put three in a row, then added a break, then three more in a row, etc. I was surprised that it actually worked. I finally posted the finished product at 1:30 am!

(The first time I did it, every tile came out in the wrong order -- it looked like a puzzle -- which meant I had to redo the entire thing. But by the second time, I got the hang of it.)

I don't know if the image will stay on this thread forever (maybe the Berkeley site which the tiles link to will have a way of de-linking them), but at least it's up for now.

Where there's a will, there's a way!

[Aquamarine]

I'm sure it was the admiration for that painting that drove you to find a way to post it. That worked out good for you, you learned something new that way.
I know what you mean about the tiles coming up in the wrong place. I did a 911 collage post of the WTC at The Finest's and it kept coming up out of sequence.

Have you tried linking a site yet? You know the a href thing.

[justshutupandtakeit]

These painting are stunningly beautiful. Of such beauty that they actually cause the jaded, degenerate world of European art to take notice. I am sure that they hate beauty like this and feel great frustration that such beauty is unable to flow from their souls and can hardly wait to get back to smearing feces on canvas and selling it to those even more degenerate than themselves.