The "Painter of Light" Story

It was an ordinary day. Just finishing my day at Grebinger Gallery where I work part-time matting and framing customers jobs. Did a huge Michael Jordan number print today that was 6 feet long and 23" high. #1 of 100, so it naturally is a collectors item. Then I stopped in the main gallery to talk to Keith, my boss and former student, about another job I will work on tomorrow. Checked out the two Thomas Kinkade framed photos when I walked in the door. Anything associated with the name Kincade has been a fast mover since his untimely death recently. The 54-year old Kinkade died on April 6th. His girlfriend said he died in his sleep, very happy, in the house he built, with the paintings he loved, and the woman he loved. Naturally, she meant her. The two had been dating for the past 18 months, about 6 months after his wife filed for legal separation. Kinkade was known for his paintings of bucolic pastoral scenes and charming cottages and candlelit images made into calendars and decorative plates that are said to fill one in 20 homes in California. The fine-art world derided his work as tacky, but mainstream Americans flocked to his paintings. At the gallery in Neffsville, Pennsylvania, we have sold his work for years. Keith would buy canvas prints and I would frame them. When we did buy his framed art, we sometimes would take the prints out of the frames and re-frame them because the cheap materials and crummy workmanship that they sold to the public was terrible. Prices for Kinkade's work were very high for the product you got. I often thought that his work was on the same scale as the velvet Elvis paintings of the 60s and 70s. In the minds of the art establishment Kinkade represented the lowest type of art, but gave his fans and countless collectors the commercial art that they loved and adored. He titled himself the "Painter of Light" because of the luminous light and tranquil mood of his paintings. That light, Kinkade would say, represented the light of God penetrating the darkness, as well as a literal translation of Jesus being “the light of the world”—and this was the other aspect of Kinkade’s art that made him so popular. An evangelical Christian (one so devout he gave all of his children the middle name “Christian”), Kinkade repeatedly posited that all of his paintings contained a “moral dimension” to their otherwise-innocuous pastoral blandness. Kinkade sold his art with the idea that it represented traditional values of faith, peace, and a simpler way of living. Some made this explicit through depictions of Christian iconography or allusions to specific Bible passages. But, he also had a dark side with overindulging and unethical business practices. Lately he insisted that this part of his past was behind him, although a 2010 arrest for DUI may have suggested otherwise. He died at a relatively young age with no known illnesses and an official cause of death is awaiting the autopsy. Thomas Kinkade said, "My mission as an artist is to capture those special moments in life adorned with beauty and light. I work to create images that project a serene simplicity that can be appreciated and enjoyed by everyone. That's what I mean by sharing the light." The many owners of his work will agree. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy. PS - photos from the top are: Thomas Kinkade, one of his luminescent paintings, two of his pieces in Grebinger Gallery, and Keith holding a canvas by Kinkade.