Thomas Kinkade: A Primer

It is estimated that one in twenty American homes contains a product adorned with an image by Thomas Kinkade. If that’s true then Kinkade, the self-professed Painter of Light, is onto something. No matter what you think about the work, there are LOTS and LOTS of people who gravitate towards Kinkade’s highly romanticized, gauzy depictions of serene landscapes, country churches, quaint cottages, and NASCAR tracks and they've collectively spent more than 4 billion dollars scooping up Kinkade merchandise over the past two decades. It’s often said that taste in art is subjective. But this isn’t really about art. It’s about commerce. Kinkade operates completely outside of the arts ecology--eschewing galleries for franchised storefronts in malls, replacing retrospective exhibitions with programs on QVC and the Home Shopping Network. Such is the nature of Kinkade’s thoroughly modern marriage of creation and consumption.

DiverseWorks takes a look at this phenomenon with the help of Houston-based artist Patricia Hernandez. Parody of Light, which runs from January 14-February 26^th in the main gallery, dissects Kinkade’s corporate empire using humor and wit with a heaping helping of irreverence thrown in. Mimicking the display techniques used in Kinkade's "Signature Galleries" and recreating the suburban home environment of an imagined Kinkade collector, Hernandez sheds light on the strategies, methods and savvy use of marketing and mechanization that have propelled Kinkade to billionaire status and earned him the mantle of "America's most collected living artist."

-Diane Barber