Thomas Kinkade (RIP) Landscape Painter

I like his work for technique and even read one of his books….but one tiny thing I always notice is that in his clearly “spring” scenes of cabins surrounded by blooming dogwoods, there is often smoke coming from the chimneys, and he shows street lights burning when it is not really dark. They have chilly springs in his worlds, I guess. Our dogwoods are halfway out right now in N.C. and the wood stove had to get churning last night.

The thatched cabin village scenes were his popular side, but I’ve seen a few seascapes-only that were simply amazing,

I think Olmsted and earlier people like Capability Brown designed with emotion and sentiment in mind. I think they were partially inspired earlier landscape painters.

Let alone rip-offs. People bought prints for high hundreds to thousands of dollars expecting them to be worth something someday, but ended up with the Hummel figures or NASCAR plates of the art world. Not saying his paintings were terrible, if that is your taste, but he sold hundreds of “hand touched prints” for exorbitant amounts of money. And the prints were not “hand touched” by him, but rather a paintng mill of assembly line workers with white paint.They aren’t worth more than the canvas they are printed on. Painter of light? No. Rembrandt was THE painter of light. Period.

Still, terrible the guy died so young. He was a marketing genius.

Absolutely!

The art and architecture world are not that unlike.

We cry about being poor, starving geniuses, then stick our noses up at anyone actually delivering a marketable product because they found a formula to appeal to the ‘masses.’

This economy is going to change that.

He gave some people something they liked. That is a good thing. I don’t like it, but it is a great thing that he brought joy to those that did. It does not mean that every painter should paint this way.

It is the same with real landscapes. Enjoy the parts of the diversity that you like and get over the things that you don’t like, but be glad you have the choice either as a producer or admirer.

Yeah, its “Mall Art”.  Its kitsch.  But I think understanding the appeal of this kind of art is worth studying.  Does the viewer like to imagine themselves in such a landscape? In a little cottage with a thatched roof?  He did observe rules of composition that work for designed landscapes as well.  A lot of New Urbanism work gets the same kind of criticism, that it is overly cute and nostalgic and not really workable for current development practices. Maybe those cute little house on small lots (property lines never seem to be obvious in his paintings, another deceit?) really ARE conducive to sociability.  And those thatched roofs, they come from locally sourced marsh reeds.  LEED points right there!  The houses have small windows and thick walls to minimize heat loss.  Note that there is typically little to no lawn to water, fertilize and mow, just billowy masses of flowering plants.  Lawns are biological deserts and create polluted runoff, right?  Can’t have that.  All those chimneys remind you that they produce their own energy with a renewable source.    Maybe they are also there to remind the viewer of the draw of fire for humans, the way people have gathered around campfires for eons, the way they reunite people and are made to mark important occasions.  It stirs up pleasant memories.

My mom has a copy of a novel he co-wrote.  From the dust jacket: “Thomas Kinkade is America’s most collected artist, a painter commuicator whose tranquil, light-infused paintings bring hope and joy to millions each year.”  There you have it – hope and joy.  If a developer were to take one of his little village scenes, or even just on cottage, and replicate it as authentically as possible, I’m sure they would sell rapidly and for a premium over other houses of comparable size.  I’ll take one over a Toll Brothers McMansion any day.