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Thursday, August 15, 2002

Artist Thomas Kinkade lights up exhibits and art collections

By KAREN D. SMITH

AMARILLO, Texas -- Some say he sells art. Some say religion. Some say an idyllic, unrealistic dream.

But no one denies that artist Thomas Kinkade, the trademarked "Painter of Light," sells. Least of all Kinkade himself.

The former background painter for animated films -- whose press material bills him as "America's most collected living artist" -- parlayed the idea to sell 1,000 prints of a painting at $35 apiece in the mid-1980s into a business that, in fiscal 2001, reportedly earned an estimated $130 million in wholesale sales and licensing revenues.

The Kinkade name and art have expanded beyond the frame, inspiring books and music CDs, computer screen savers, florist bouquets, home furnishings and accessories, wallpaper, china and even houses patterned after the cozy homes in his paintings. The mission: making Kinkade not just an artist, but a "lifestyle brand" of the Ralph Lauren and Martha Stewart ilk.

"I think he's definitely a Norman Rockwell, and I think time will tell if he's a Martha Stewart," Bob Martin, vice president of Media Arts Group Inc. -- the company that publishes Kinkade's work -- said in a telephone interview before the Stewart stock trading flap. "We think there's very much the potential, obviously, for there to be parallels. He could be like Ralph Lauren, Oprah, Martha Stewart."

Kinkade encourages references to Walt Disney because of the animator's role as a "cultural spokesman," not a marketeer.

"You can't market yourself into that position," he said recently by phone while painting in his Northern California studio. "I've just always talked about my homespun kind of values. It's an outgrowth of what I believe in."

Even the subjects Kinkade paints and the messages he attaches to them provide debate fodder. Is he ministering or selling religion? Do his works recall soul-soothing simplicity or utter fantasy?

"People like the fact that he's a Christian artist and that he signs his pieces with the sign of the fish and John 3:16 by his name. Everyone can make their own decisions about that. My personal view is I feel that the man is sincere and genuine," said Larry Lewis whose Lewis Picture Framing has the only Kinkade Showcase Premier Gallery -- one of several levels of Kinkade franchises -- in the Texas Panhandle area.

"I don't believe (Kinkade) is using the Christian message just to sell his art. And most of the people who come in don't feel that way."

Kinkade, who has called God his "art agent" in several interviews, doesn't dispute the connection between his faith and his art.

"It's central," he said. "I pray over every painting. This is an act of faith. You start with a blank canvas, and you smear some gooey pigments on it for 30 hours, 40, 50 hours. I give God the credit. ... He gives us our talents for a reason.

"I see my art as a tool to enhance the lives of other people. Somewhere, I began to see that this was a powerful tool that God might use to reach into the home of someone."

Kinkade simply can't be painted with a broad brush, his art viewed through the eyes of praising, disdainful or, even, indifferent beholders.

"We come at art from a lot of different directions," said Patrick McCracken, director of the Amarillo Museum of Art. "There is a market, obviously. I think, when a painter's ideas become an industry, then it enters another realm. It's the industrialization; that's where the criticism comes from. It makes it difficult to discuss (the art) as art when it's a chair, a Barcalounger."

Kinkade wants to make his art more accessible to patrons, Martin said by phone during a Philadelphia business trip. Mass production does not degrade the value of the art or the artist.

"I think Thomas answers that best," Martin said. "He draws an analogy to musicians and to authors. Those people are edified based on the millions of units they sell, and yet they're called artists. Just because something is rare doesn't make it fulfilling."

Of course, Kinkade's not the only artist to ratchet up production, McCracken said.

"Who is damaged becomes the question," he said. "I don't know that there's any harm in it. I mean, Andy Warhol went at it this way, but it was not at this level; but he was interested in putting the artwork in the hands of as many people as possible."

Work by the duo of Currier and I'ves is another example of art available on a wide scale, McCracken said, though he wonders about Kinkade's motivation.

"This is about money," he said. "I don't think the motivation is to put more work in people's hands, it's to have more dollars change hands."

Some argue Kinkade has tapped into the public's idyllic dreams under the guise of religion.

"The most intriguing thing about Kinkade's work is that it is decidedly not about religion," said Dr. Howard Miller, who teaches classes on religion and American pop culture at the University of Texas at Austin. Miller described one of Kinkade's New England village scenes.

"You can barely make out the cross on the steeple. There are never overtly religious symbols in any of this. He's much too astute of an artist to limit his product to Christians," Miller said. "This is sheer nostalgia for an America we all wish had been but never was. It makes no demands on anybody. It's just sheer, indulgent, nostalgia -- feeling good.

"It absolves us of any engagement with our culture. And why shouldn't we want to escape from it? These are not happy times, but they're what God has dealt us."

Yet Martin argues art should help viewers escape.

"That's like saying we shouldn't go on vacation, we shouldn't go to Hawaii, we shouldn't get that spiritual nourishment," he said. "I think to suggest that is really myopic. Everyone needs that kind of emotional touchstone, and about 10 million people have found it in Thomas Kinkade's art."

Kinkade espouses simplicity as part of his campaign. The hopeful homespun plot of "Cape Light," a March hardcover inspirational romance novel co-authored with Katherine Spencer, supports his wish for an "iconography of hope," he said.

"There are people with old-fashioned values, people with a living faith who don't spend a lot of time wrapped up in anger and hatred," he said. "That may sell Harold Robbins novels, but I'm not into that."

Kinkade said he wants to stress the "value of simplicity, to enjoy the preciousness of every moment, the simpler things -- sunshine and walks in the park and taking the kids out for quiet experiences, rather than noisy ones.

"Frankly, in the 21st century, people are hungry for that message. Sunday is no longer the day of rest, it's the day of (warehouse retailer) Costco. We're on a treadmill of media and shallow experiences."

At home, Kinkade and his wife, Nanette, have simplified by banishing television, even as the artist hawks his wares on network shopping channels.

"I have my own TV show and 'Painter of Light Hour,' and my kids have never seen it," he said. "I want to use the media to my advantage as a communicator."

"We're radical about that (home TV ban)," Kinkade said later. "We've had to stick to our guns on that one because, as Christians and as a basic philosophy of how we want to live life, we just feel it's better to detach."

Kinkade may, in fact, expand his TV ventures.

"We're looking at a television opportunity, Thomas Kinkade's version of 'The Waltons' -- home values translated to the medium of television," he said.

The artist fights critics with good works, Martin said. After Sept. 11, he entered a partnership with the Salvation Army, contributing artwork that has generated about $2 million through sales of prints, "and it's still generating revenues," Martin said.

Kinkade's art has helped raise funds for more than 500 nonprofit organizations.

"We're doing good by doing well," Martin said. "We have a whole department, two people, who work on nonprofit relationships. They work on how to make the product affordable so that charities can sell it with no risk. It's very much the fabric of who we are, because of who Thom is."

Kinkade's image link to Disney resurfaces in the artist's own list of future plans.

"There are a lot of things in the works," Kinkade said. "We've long envisioned, for want of a better word, a theme park. But it would be an anti-theme park, celebrating simpler pleasures. It would be an American village at the turn of the century."

No one could have imagined Disney creating all he did from a mouse, said the man striving to do the same from his own artistic vision.

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Distributed by The Associated Press

from the Reporter-News