Background and career
William Thomas Kinkade III (January 19, 1958 – April 6, 2012) was an American painter of popular realistic, pastoral, and idyllic subjects. He is notable for achieving success during his lifetime with the mass marketing of his work as printed reproductions and other licensed products by means of the Thomas Kinkade Company. According to Kinkade's company, at one point one in every 20 American homes owned a copy of one of his paintings. Kinkade described himself as a "Painter of Light," a phrase he protected by trademark. He was criticized for some of his behavior and business practices; art critics faulted his work for being kitschy. Kinkade died as a result of acute intoxication from alcohol and diazepam at the age of 54. Reportedly, about 600 of his 6,000 unpublished works have been published posthumously.
William Thomas Kinkade was born in 1958 in Sacramento County, California. He grew up in the town of Placerville with a single mother. She was so poor that they often could not afford heating or lighting. He graduated from El Dorado High School in Placerville in 1976, and attended the University of California, Berkeley and ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena. Some of the people who mentored and taught Kinkade prior to college included Charles Bell and Glenn Wessels. Wessels encouraged Kinkade to go to University of California, Berkeley. Kinkade's relationship with Wessels is the subject of a semi-biographical movie released during 2008, Christmas Cottage. After two years of general education at Berkeley, Kinkade transferred to ArtCenter College of Design.
For the summer of June 1980, Kinkade traveled across the United States with his college friend James Gurney. The two finished their journey in New York and secured a contract with Guptill Publications to produce a sketching handbook. In 1982, they produced a book, The Artist's Guide to Sketching, which was one of Guptill Publications' best-sellers that year. The success of the book resulted in both working for Ralph Bakshi Studios where they created background art for the animated feature movie Fire and Ice (1983). While working on the film, Kinkade began to explore the depiction of light and of imagined worlds. After that, Kinkade worked as a painter, selling his originals in galleries throughout California.
Recurring features of Kinkade's paintings are pastel colors and brilliant illumination of the scene. Rendered with idealistic values of American scene painting, his works often portray bucolic and idyllic settings including gardens, streams, stone cottages, lighthouses, and Main Streets. His hometown of Placerville (where his works are much displayed) was the inspiration for many of his street and snow scenes. He also depicted various Christian themes, including the cross and churches. His country scenes rarely depict people and he was frequently asked questions about that. Kinkade said he was emphasizing the value of simple pleasures and his intent was to communicate inspirational messages through his paintings. A self-described "devout Christian" (even giving all four of his children the middle name "Christian"), he believed that he gained inspiration from his religious beliefs and his work was intended to include a moral dimension. Many pictures include specific chapter-and-verse allusions to Bible passages.
In 2009, he painted a portrait of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the cover of that year's race program which included details in the crowd, hiding among them the figures of Norman Rockwell and Dale Earnhardt. He also painted the farewell portrait for Yankee Stadium. Concerning the Indianapolis Motor Speedway painting, Kinkade said: The passion I have is to capture memories, to evoke the emotional connection we have to an experience. I came out here and stood up on the bleachers and looked around, and I saw all the elements of the track. It was empty at the time. But I saw the stadium, how the track laid out, the horizon, the skyline of Indianapolis and the Pagoda. I saw it all in my imagination. I began thinking, 'I want to get this energy—what I call the excitement of the moment—into this painting.' As I began working on it, I thought, 'Well you have this big piece of asphalt, the huge spectator stands; I've got to do something to get some movement.' So I just started throwing flags into it. It gives it kind of a patriotic excitement.
Artist and Guggenheim Fellow Jeffrey Vallance has spoken about Kinkade's devout religious themes and their reception in the art world:
