"This one's for you, Walt,"





Ohhh, I know I shouldn't be making fun of any painter right now having recently decided to take it up again myself, and I looked long and hard at his technique and it is really very good, at least in some paintings. See here:




But oh man, the subject matter and the ambiance just give me the creeps. Doesn't any one turn out the lights? EVERY window is lit with the color of flames.

"A Kinkade painting was typically rendered in slightly surreal pastels. It typically featured a cottage or a house of such insistent cosiness as to seem actually sinister, suggestive of a trap designed to attract Hansel and Gretel.-- Joan Didion

"This one's for you, Walt," the artist said one night as he urinated on a Winnie the Pooh figure, said Terry Sheppard, a former vice president for Kinkade's company.

Catalog
http://www.thomaskinkade.com/magi/servlet/com.asucon.ebiz.catalog.web.tk.CatalogServlet
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... one in 20 US homes
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1739383,00.html
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"The Village at Hiddenbrooke", a Thomas Kinkade-themed community of homes
... What you find in the rolling hills behind Vallejo is the exact opposite of the Kinkadeian ideal. Instead of quaint cottages, there's generic tract housing; instead of lush landscapes, concrete patios; instead of a cozy village, there's a bland collection of homes with nothing -- not a church, not a cafe, not even a town square.

... Fireplaces here are gas only. There's no quaint neighborhood church in the village, either; nor is there a grocery store, a community square, or a restaurant -- heck, there isn't even a corner store. If you want to shop or pray or eat, you'll need to get on the freeway and head into Vallejo, since Hiddenbrooke is a residential-only zone.

... Fake family photos of happy, wholesome, all-American families frolicking at beaches, golf courses and weddings adorn the walls. Floral and chintz fabrics abound, and the "children's rooms" are done up in golf themes and horse themes and, for one poor mythical college student, an entire University of California at Davis theme (including UC-Davis wallpaper, pillows, pennants, and framed campus photographs.) And while the homes all boast computers -- this is high-tech country, after all -- the fictional "matriarch" of one model home still pens her thank-you notes the old-fashioned way: in ink, on Thomas Kinkade stationery. ("Fran -- Our new home is beautiful! We love the small town feel and the community is wonderful. It is a joy to live in our new home.")

"The idea of 'country life' as embodied in suburbia becomes more and more of a cartoon,"

http://archive.salon.com/mwt/style/2002/03/18/kinkade_village/index.html
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The I hate Thomas Kinkade club
http://littleredboat.co.uk/?p=2306

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Semi-biographical story of Thomas Kinkade
Thomas Kinkade's Home For Christmas (2007) - Movie Info - Yahoo! Movies

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Posted: Wed - January 2, 2008 at 01:08 AM            

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