The greatest painter the world has ever known died last week, leaving millions of soft focus paintings of little cottages for us to remember him by. Like any true artist, Kincade had to fight through hard times. An art school dropout from a broken home, Kinkade became a born-again Christian in 1980, and shortly afterwards started peddling his inspirational landscapes out of the trunk of his car. Once the Lord was by his side, it was almost as if God became “his art agent”, supplying him with his best ideas. One of those ideas was mass-marketing his canvases to the point that he has become recognized as the most-collected living artist — and one of the richest. At one point, Kinkade’s factories churned out as many as 500 reproductions a day of his most beloved works, which then sold for thousands of dollars in Kinkade’s galleries. He became a best-selling author and inspirational speaker, and he designed a housing complex of $400,000 homes inspired by his paintings. Suck on that Matisse. Van Gogh would have cut off his schlong for those kind of numbers. At the height of his popularity a decade ago, Kinkade was profiled in magazines as diverse as Christianity Today and the New Yorker, but in recent years financial troubles and bizarre behavior began overwhelming the idyllic images. Kinkade was accused of behaving inappropriately with women and even urinating on a Winnie the Pooh figure at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim — an especially odd occurrence for a man who compared himself to Walt Disney, as well as Norman Rockwell, the illustrator of iconic Americana. But all great artists have their dark side. So I say farewell to you “Painter of Light”. Enjoy your idyllic cottage in the sky. Always may you have a fire in the chimney and a light in the window.
American Roosters 