Dark Portrait: Thomas Kincade

[Ex-COG]

Dark Portrait of a 'Painter of Light'

Christian-themed artist Thomas Kinkade is accused of ruthless tactics and seamy personal conduct. He disputes the allegations.

By Kim Christensen, Times Staff Writer

March 5, 2006

 

Thomas Kinkade is famous for his luminous landscapes and street scenes, those dreamy, deliberately inspirational images he says have brought "God's light" into people's lives, even as they have made him one of America's most collected artists.

 

A devout Christian who calls himself the "Painter of Light," Kinkade trades heavily on his beliefs and says God has guided his brush — and his life — for the last 20 years.

 

"When I got saved, God became my art agent," he said in a 2004 video biography, genteel in tone and rich in the themes of faith and family values that have helped win him legions of fans, albeit few among art critics.

 

But some former Kinkade employees, gallery operators and others contend that the Painter of Light has a decidedly dark side.

 

In litigation and interviews with the Los Angeles Times, some former gallery owners depict Kinkade, 48, as a ruthless businessman who drove them to financial ruin at the same time he was fattening his business associates' bank accounts and feathering his nest with tens of millions of dollars.

 

Kinkade — whose solely owned Thomas Kinkade Co. is based in Morgan Hill, Calif. — denies these allegations.

 

Last month, however, a three-member panel of the American Arbitration Assn. ordered his company to pay $860,000 for defrauding the former owners of two failed Virginia galleries. That decision marks the first major legal setback for Kinkade, who won three previous arbitration claims. Five more are pending.

 

It's not just Kinkade's business practices that have been called into question. Former gallery owners, ex-employees and others say his personal behavior also belies the wholesome image on which he's built his empire.

 

In sworn testimony and interviews, they recount incidents in which an allegedly drunken Kinkade heckled illusionists Siegfried & Roy in Las Vegas, cursed a former employee's wife who came to his aid when he fell off a barstool, and palmed a startled woman's breasts at a signing party in South Bend, Ind.

 

And then there is Kinkade's proclivity for "ritual territory marking," as he called it, which allegedly manifested itself in the late 1990s outside the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim.

 

"This one's for you, Walt," the artist quipped late one night as he urinated on a Winnie the Pooh figure, said Terry Sheppard, a former vice president for Kinkade's company, in an interview.

 

Kinkade declined The Times' request for an interview but responded to written questions. He labeled those accounts of his personal behavior as "ridiculous" and "crazy allegations."

 

The artist and his lawyer, Dana Levitt, contend that Sheppard, a key witness in the arbitration cases against Kinkade and his company, is a disgruntled ex-employee, noting that he lost a wrongful termination claim against the artist's charitable foundations in 2004. They also deny the ex-dealers' allegations, which they say are driven by "lawyers playing the litigation lottery" and are "uncoupled from reality."

 

Kinkade, a self-described product of a broken home and a hardscrabble childhood, once worked as a film animator and hawked his paintings at supermarket parking lots in his hometown of Placerville, Calif. His climb to fame began two decades ago, when he and his wife spent their life savings to start making his prints.

 

Since then, Kinkade has spun a hugely lucrative career from his distinctly romantic, idealized images of street scenes, lighthouses, country cottages and landscapes. It is a world without sharp edges, all warm and fuzzily aglow with setting suns and streetlights and luminescent windows.

 

Critics have described Kinkade's works — with titles such as "Sunset on Lamplight Lane" and "The Garden of Prayer" — as little more than mass-produced kitsch. But that has not deterred the multitudes who pay from a few hundred dollars for paper prints to $10,000 or more for canvas editions he has signed and retouched.

 

"It's mainstream art, not art you have to look at to try to understand, or have an art degree to know whether it's good or not," said Mike Koligman, a longtime fan who with his wife owns Kinkade galleries in San Diego and Utah.

 

Karen de la Carriere feels the same way. Framed Kinkades fill her living room walls and have transformed a long hallway into a veritable gantlet of glowing lithographs. Kinkade's art is both a personal passion and a business for the Los Angeles resident, who deals in the resale market for Kinkades, selling more than $25,000 of his works each month on eBay and her website.

 

"This is God-given talent," she said of a favored print, "Sierra Evening Majesty," with its snowy peaks, red-gold skies and smoke wisping from a cabin chimney. "He is a modern-day Leonardo da Vinci or Monet. There is no one in our generation who can paint like that."

 

For more of this 4 page story: Dark Portrait

 

I was never into his artwork, but I knew people who were. I never knew this stuff was going on. On page two, it reads, "Ex-dealers allege that the artist used his faith — and manipulated theirs — to induce them to invest in Thomas Kinkade Signature Galleries, independently owned stores licensed to deal exclusively in his work. They also contend he sought to devalue the company before buying it back two years ago for $32.7 million, renaming it Thomas Kinkade Co." and "Though the (arbitration) panel did not single out the artist in its fraud finding, it wrote that he and other Media Arts Group executives had created "a certain religious environment designed to instill a special relationship of trust" with the couple, who have since divorced. The company, communicating through Kinkade and the others, often used terms such as "partner," "trust," "Christian" and "God" to convey a sense of "higher calling," the panel wrote."

 

But it gets worse on page 4, where it describes how a drunk Kincade groped a woman's breasts, and later had this to say about it: ""But you've got to remember, I'm the idol to these women who are there. They sell my work every day, you know. They're enamored with any attention I would give them. I don't know what kind of flirting they were trying to do with me. I don't recall what was going on that night." In response to The Times' written questions, Kinkade did not address any specific incident. "It does disappoint me when people I have tried to help and befriend make crazy allegations about me," he said. "I am a big fan of imagination, but the specific allegations you have described to me are ridiculous and I feel like the victim of a legal stalker." He described himself as "an average, hard-working guy who just happens to be a famous artist" and said he didn't take himself too seriously."

 

Ok, so he grabs a gal's boobs, and it's somehow her fault because he's her idol?

 

Oh, and pissing on Winnie the Pooh was pretty disgusting also. This guy needs a mental evaluation!

[SBeeland]

Never heard of this guy. But he sounds like a loser. "When I got saved, God became my art agent," yeah, uh-huh.

[godlessgrrl]

I first heard about this guy when I was in art school.

 

He doesn't have a particularly good reputation in the art world in general.

[All Gods Fail]

This made me want to vomit:

 

"This is God-given talent," she said of a favored print, "Sierra Evening Majesty," with its snowy peaks, red-gold skies and smoke wisping from a cabin chimney. "He is a modern-day Leonardo da Vinci or Monet. There is no one in our generation who can paint like that."

 

Da Vinci & Monet. Both of these artists were profoundly misunderstood in their lifetimes, and Monet in particular was reviled by the general public. To compare artists of great magnitude who fought against convention with a fantasy illustrator like Kincade is the absolute depth of ignorance.

 

150 years ago this same lady would have been spitting at Monet paintings.

[nightflight]

What if this is all not true? My first instinct is to believe the allegations (because I hate his "art" and what it represents) but maybe it is an angry ex-employee seeking vengence. I certainly don't begrudge the man for making a buck.

[Amethyst]

I've heard of this guy. I don't hate his art. Some of it is good, but I wouldn't buy it for myself. Van Gogh is probably my favorite artist, actually. I love his "Starry nights" painting.

 

Still, I'm inclined to believe the allegations because they show that everyone is human and we all have faults. Putting people on top of pedestals doesn't work in the long run.

[Reach]

What if this is all not true? My first instinct is to believe the allegations (because I hate his "art" and what it represents) but maybe it is an angry ex-employee seeking vengence. I certainly don't begrudge the man for making a buck.

Same here. Just my opinion but this story sounds like the doings of a disgruntled former employee.

 

I personally despise Kincade's saccharine work but to describe it as "art" is an insult to artists everywhere. And to be compared with masters such as Da Vinci and Monet is ludicrous! It is insulting to the masters.

[Kryten]

No, this is all true. I've heard FOR a couple of YEARS now about Kincade's "shady" dealings and screwing over gallery owners and peers. This is just further confirmation. Why wouldn't you believe it? Remember, he can do anything he wants-- he's not perfect, just forgiven!

[Guest isis]

His paints are okay but they remind me of another artist that drew lifeless landscapes.. Hitler.

 

Both mens drawings are centered around landscapes with no real dynamic action in the frame. Even when people are feactured in the paints they blended into the backround becoming another part of the scape.

 

And both men were ego manaics who liked to scam people.

[Eponymic]

Sounds pretty typical to me.

 

Christianity is the leading architect of dysfunctionality after all.

[Amanda]

I personally despise Kincade's saccharine work but to describe it as "art" is an insult to artists everywhere. And to be compared with masters such as Da Vinci and Monet is ludicrous! It is insulting to the masters.

 

I didn't know all that about Kinkaid! I love art and don't particularly like his work either. It seems to me he has NEVER been known for his creative side in originality, color, theme, arrangement, etc. It has been my impression that he became well known because he came up with special ingredients in his paints so that when the lights go down in the room, the painting takes on the same characteristics as the day getting darker. Such as when the lights go dimmer, the picture depicts the day getting darker with light from the windows glowing brighter into the dark; and the light shimmers on the plants, water, or snow with a gleam just as with the evening sunlight or moonlight. That part is really quite amazing! If you get a chance to go into one of his galleries, check it out. They always have dimmer lights available for his art to demonstrate this effect. Although he does make significant claims towards being a Christian, as far as I know, he has not done many Christ centered themes, such as did Dali, DiVinci, Michael Angelo, etc.

 

One thing I've noticed, it seems most great artist do have depression VanGogh, one of my favorites, definitely had severe emotional issues... as did his buddy Gaughan. Picasso is known for his mood swings represented by Blue Periods and such. Monet who was friends with Renoir, left in search of himself. Degas, left to fend for himself when his wealthy father died and left him no money... plus seemed obsessed with painting a special young ballerina, and Rembrandt lost his beloved wife shortly after childbirth. Goya was basically deaf, Wyeth painted the neighbors little daughter nude most of her life growing up... secretly, called The Helga Paintings. I think these artists had extraordinary pain in their lives and could transfer their depth of feelings onto the canvas magnificently. Sounds like Kinkaid is different. Maybe when he awakens from his narcissism, works through his own depression... who knows... he might actually do some creative work. :wink:

[Ro-bear]

And then there is Kinkade's proclivity for "ritual territory marking," as he called it, which allegedly manifested itself in the late 1990s outside the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim.

 

"This one's for you, Walt," the artist quipped late one night as he urinated on a Winnie the Pooh figure"

 

It's mainstream art...

 

I wonder if urinary expression is protected speech under the first amendment.

 

I wonder if Kinkade was confused; it's Winnie-the-Pooh, not Winnie-the-Pee.

 

This is such a coincidence; I like to piss on Kinkade's work.

 

I have a good idea for the "Painter of Light": a nice backlit self-portrait of the artist pissing on a country cottage, the stream of urine shining like a shaft of gold.