Artist Thomas Kinkade: biography, creativity

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

How do you feel when you see the work of a real artist? There are many of them, and each viewer has their own. But there is also a general surprise. How is it done? Who guided this hand? How is this vision arranged if he saw what others pass by? And this surprise breeds admiration. In this case, you wonder differently - do these pictures really have an author? Haven't they always existed - boxes of chocolates and postcards from the beginning of the century? It turns out not.

Their author - Thomas Kinkade - was our contemporary. After getting to know his biography, respect is born: this man knew what he wanted.

Start

He was born in 1958 in Placerville, near Sacramento, California. Judging by the canonical biography of Kincaid, already at the age of 4 he corrected the perspective in the drawing of his older sister, at 11 he sold his painting for $ 7.5, at 13 he impressed the professional level of art teachers at school. From the age of 16, he met Glen Wessels, an artist who at one time taught at the University of Berkeley. On his advice, Thomas Kinkade enters this educational institution.

But after studying there for two years, he realized that the approach to painting, which lay inbasis of the training program at Berkeley, does not suit him. He said that constant self-deepening, studying the world and searching for a way to express his own vision of the environment was not for him. As Thomas Kinkade later wrote, he saw the great purpose of his artistic talent in enriching the lives of others. So he moved to the Art Center of Pasadena College of Design.

First success

He had a lot of good marketing moves in his life. While he was touring the country with college friend Jim Gurnay, the idea to write a book came up. What can two art students write about? Thomas Kinkade decided to immediately release a textbook for painters, and the 1982 "Artist's Guide to Sketching" became the best-selling publication of the Guptill company, with which a lucrative contract was signed.

The Ralph Bakshi Studio, where he and Jim came to work in 1982, created the full-length cartoon "Fire and Ice", which was released a year later. Here Thomas got acquainted with the technology and visual techniques adopted in Disney animation. This helped him finally decide on the product that was supposed to bring him financial well-being. Soon the artist Thomas Kinkade begins to independently and very actively sell his works.

Trademark "Artist of Light"

His style is often generously referred to as impressionism, although he does not haveno relationship. With Kincaid, everything is extremely simple and unambiguous, because his goal, as he always repeated, is art that is understandable to everyone. And reckoning with the Impressionists comes from his official website - an important element of information support for the trading strategy.

Impressive, but incorrect for those who understand Kincaid's indication as his forerunner of the luminists of the 19th century. In the landscapes of F. E. Church (1826-1900), D. F. Kensett (1816-1872), S. R. Gifford (1823-1880) and others, light is inseparable from the space and air with which they are filled. Just like the great Turner, who was the first to be called the "artist of light." The depth on most of Kincaid's creations is similar to that of the embossed pictures of thin plastic, obtained by stamping.

But, unlike the unenterprising masters of the past, Kincaid prudently registered the phrase Painter of Light - the artist of light - as a trademark, and it is with such a prefix that it is supposed to be called officially, especially when making trade transactions.

Perfect family, perfect Christian

An important factor in commercial success, especially in the US market, is the conformity of the public image with accepted standards and a crystal clear reputation. Thomas Kinkade, whose biography was carefully calibrated according to the templates of an ideal American, was for the time being an ideal family man: he married a girl he had loved since childhood, had four daughters, whom he named after famous American artists - Merritt (William Merritt Chase (1849-1916)), Chandler (Howard Chandler Christy (1873-1952)),Winsor McCay (1867-1934) and Everett Shinn (1876-1953)).

An excellent marketing move was that he often inscribed the initials of his wife and daughters into the images in the paintings. Who would refuse out of a sporting interest to find them among a million strokes and strokes?

The second name of all the daughters was Christian - Thomas called himself a “devout Christian” by religion, although officially such a denomination does not exist. Thomas Kinkade, whose paintings contain many religious symbols, often talked about the divine origin of his talent and inspiration, about the moralizing function of his works. He has written many books of the corresponding content. "Don't complicate life, be with your family more often" - such postulates were the main content of such texts.

He did a lot of charity work and was offended when journalists wrote more not about this, but about his arrest for drunk driving and how he, being tipsy, urinated on the Winnie the Pooh figurine in Disneyland.

Trade network

Of course, he wanted recognition among professionals. But most of them weren't even jealous of Kincaid's financial success-too different, in fact, he was doing. What was created by Thomas Kinkade, whose paintings, from the point of view of the classical school, are similar to amateur ones, was not attributed to naive art, where the message does not have such an unambiguous commercial character. He called Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) his ideal and model, which also looked like cunning. Rockwell's canvases, in addition to understandable realism and kindness, were characterized by a virtuoso painting technique, semantic ambiguity and amazing humor and irony, which the blissful landscapes of Thomas Kinkade lack by default.

Serious galleries didn't show Kincaid, so he set up a chain selling them, again a marketing coup. Fairy-tale houses and cute landscapes were sold by the thousands in the form of repetitions printed on canvas textured media, in the form of postcards, illuminated panels, puzzles, etc. Soon his Media Arts Group Inc proudly announced that one of twenty American homes has picture of Kincaid. He was called the most popular artist in the United States, he was given a lot of awards and titles, mainly for the number of works sold.

Dramatic departure

In 2011, Thomas and his wife Nanette divorced, six months later he got together with a younger girlfriend, and on April 6, 2012, he died from a huge dose of Valium and alcohol. Still, he was a real artist, something haunted his soul, pushed him to search for the meaning of his work, and then into severe binges. I would like to think that this is not only the bad heredity of his father.

But even after death, new pictures of Kincaid appear, painted by the artists of his company, who mastered his style to the smallest detail under the supervision of Thomas himself. They differ from Kincaid's originals only in the presence of a special stamp in the corner. So numerousfans of his work can hope that this source of comfort for them will not dry up.

And this is good, because many people really find an outlet in our harsh and cruel world in Kincaid's paintings, consider his works to be the best examples of painting. The main thing is that they are not the only ones for them.