Saturday, April 7, 2012

Real Heroes: Thomas Kinkade - Rest in Peace, Painter of Light

I was shocked by this news story about the death of Thomas Kinkade:  http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20120407/US.Obit.Kinkade/.  After seeing the movie The Christmas Cottage, I posted in this very blog about it:  http://scifichristianguy.blogspot.com/2012/01/made-for-tv-christmas-movies-morgans.html.  Every month in my journal, I always name someone who I admire, and after seeing this movie about Kinkade, I chose to site him as a role model, someone who was living life the way I think it should be lived.  He will be missed.  I find it interesting that in this very news story link above, they mention how the public loved his work, but the critics did not, and it's the very same thing I talk about in my tribute to him, explaining what it is about him I liked well enough to name him as a Real Hero:


I don't quite understand it, but think critics, and perhaps other painters, may have a problem with him, in the same way they have a problem with Stephen King.  Stephen King himself has talked about this problem, and said something to the effect that once an artist reaches a certain amount of fame, his art is equated with fast food.  While other “more serious” writers are trying to churn out serious, more artistic tombs, Stephen King’s books were starting to be treated like McNovels.  He even addresses it in some of his stories, writing under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, and a couple of his characters (Paul Sheldon in Misery, Thad Beaumont/George Stark in The Dark Half) are writers much like himself, churning out their popular and still well written genre pieces, put yearning for more praise from the critics and attempting to stretch themselves with deeper works and themes.
     I think some critics, and maybe some other famous painters, don’t take Thomas Kinkade seriously, in the same way they didn’t take Norman Rockwell too seriously until many years after his death (and even now, they may still not take him all that seriously).  Good painters, perhaps, but can they compare to the Masters?  Can Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post covers and Kinkade’s “simple” and idealized nostalgic landscapes of light compare with the masterworks of Michelangelo, Rembrandt, da Vinci, Monet, van Gogh, and Picasso?  The art critic would find Kinkade too commercialized, and then view his work with disdain, I’m sure.
      But ask me if I care!  I’ve seen some of the “serious and thematic” paintings by the likes of these painters, and while I tend towards renaissance and realism in the paintings I enjoy, and even some impressionism, when they get too high brow, the paintings themselves start to get strange.  They may be powerfully thematic, but then they start to impress only scholars and lose touch with the common man.  I’ve seen paintings the critics seem to love, such as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon by Pablo Picasso, The Two Fridas by Frida Kahlo, and Soft Construction with Boiled Beans by Salvador Dali, and paintings like this may impress art critics, but yeach!  
This is the very reason these art critics may have a problem with artists like Rockwell and Kinkade, and the reason art movements like expressionism and cubism aren’t wholly embraced by the general public.  It’s a struggle that occurs in all the arts, from fashion and performance art to photography, music to television, books and poetry to plays and film.  Each of these art forms has their less popular but serious works the learned critics tend to like, and each of them also has the pulpy popular stuff that pleases the masses.  I sometimes can appreciate the less accessible art that doesn’t generally appeal to the masses (such as the expressionist painting The Scream by Edvard Munch), but more often than not, I go along with the popular crowd, especially with something like paintings.  I’d much rather have something – anything – by Norman Rockwell and Thomas Kinkade, hanging in my living room than some strange looking piece of art from a movement like expressionism or cubism.
     With that said, let me also just say that I love the paintings of Thomas Kinkade, and I really admire the man himself!  After watching the biographical movie The Christmas Cottage, a movie I would like to own now, I’ve come to see this gentle Painter of Light as a fellow compassionate, kind, and sympathetic spirit.  I admire him for the same reasons I said I admired the fictional character of Michael Sullivan from those Star Trek: Voyager episodes “Fair Haven” and “Spirit Folk” that I wrote about before.  Thomas Kinkade has achieved the kind of life I would like to have, doing what he loves and (seemingly) having an uncomplicated life full of the love of Christ.  He doesn’t seem to care what the critics say, but paints the kinds of pictures he loves and that speak to the common man, especially the Christian, and there’s nothing wrong with that as long as pride doesn’t get in the way.  And talent?  Boy, does he have talent!  I love his inviting, colorful paintings.  His art may not be critically thematic, but it presents an inviting and romanticized world that speaks to the Christian heart about the way things could be without sin in the world, and illustrate, perhaps, a little bit of what Heaven may one day feel like.
     But more than just his beautiful paintings and his gentle, loving spirit, the man, by all outward appearances I have seen, has a deep love for God.  I’m not saying he’s perfect, because none of us are perfect, and in fact, if you Google “Thomas Kinkade Christian,” you are likely to find articles about some of his possible failings as such.  True or not, by the same token, if you were to investigate anyone, you’d likely come across someone who didn’t like them and had some negative things to say.  I love Dinesh D’Souza, but the internet is brimming over with people who can’t stand him.  I’d hate to see what others might have to say about me!  I realize the kinds of things that might happen to a man, even a Christian man, once he becomes a business, and his name alone is a selling point, but I can still applaud the image of himself he is selling to the masses, whether or not it’s true (and I choose to believe it is true).  There are many who have achieved his level of fame who don’t project the positive and loving Christian image he does.  He is leading others to God.  I’ve always maintained that the people I admire are most likely idealized versions, sort of like Kinkade’s paintings themselves.  You can hope, but you’re not likely to find something in the real world quite as enchanted as Kinkade’s perfect landscapes full of delightful cabins with blissful light shining from them any more than you’re likely to find people who won’t ultimately let you down in one way or another.  My admiration of Thomas Kinkade is for the qualities I can see and would like to see more of in myself.  At the very least, I can wish for the ideal, and I for one would rather give him the benefit of the doubt, because that’s what loving Christians do.  At any rate, I’d like to one day meet the man and judge for myself.  Other than these few internet complainers (and who knows if you can really trust them either, because, after all, who are they anyway), I’ve liked what I’ve seen and heard about the man!  I strive to find that same passion in my writing.



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