Calling a Kinkade, a Kinkade

Award winning artist Thomas Kinkade is often referred to and promoted as the “Painter of Light,” and said to be “America's most collected living artist.” His specialty is cottages and nature scenes that seem to have a special “glow from within;” It’s his trademark.

Kinkade is not at all one of those artists who are “starving.” This is because instead of selling his “paintings” one at a time, the way most artists have, he mass markets them by the truckloads, and he keeps the originals himself. More than an artist, the man is a master of marketing his mass production method and he makes a lot of money at it too. On the Home Shopping Channel QVC show, Mr. Kinkade is said to have make over a million dollars per hour.

“Well, it was almost as if God became my art agent,” said Kinkade in a 2002, USA Today article, “He basically gave me ideas, and one of the foundational ideas he gave me was a way to create multiple forms of art that looked like the original, but weren't just a poster."

Kinkade paints an original and then begins the mass production process by taking a digital photo of his painting. Then after transferring that image to plastic, it’s glued on to a piece of canvas. After that, a “highlight artist” (basically a hired hand working on a Kincaid assembly line) does some touching up with a little paint and it's framed....Voila!... a “genuine” Kinkade emerges. Each piece of art is then sold, starting at about $195.00 for a nine-by-twelve-inch print. The original artwork, (when it is sold and not kept in the Kincaid’s personal vault) easily sells for at least $100,000.00. In addition,

There are different levels to the painting you can purchase too. He has special "Classics Collection Master Edition Canvas Lithographs" that come with: 1. a "personal retouching by the artist himself," 2. the artist’s thumbprint, 3. a Master Edition Seal of authenticity, 4. an authorized security signature, and 5. yet a second signature that is done in metallic ink.

On a CBS 60 Minutes program in 2004, the company was questioned about the practice of duplication and the practice of having someone else, (not Kinkade) actually do the painting on a transferred image. The company CEO. Craig Fleming said, “Tom paints every single painting that we produce. It's still an original Kinkade as far as we're concerned."

Kinkade’s personal goal is to put a Kinkade painting on every wall, in every home in America, but his dream is even bigger than that. People in America can live in Kinkade cottage-styled homes. All you have to do is purchase on at the "Village at Hiddenbrooke,"in Vallejo, California where Kinkade has created a subdivision of 100 life-size, Kinkade cottages. Each comes with the special kinkadian touch of electrical lighting too, so your home will look just like one of his paintings.

At his webpage, Kinkade calls himself "a devout Christian,” and he “credits the Lord for both the ability and the inspiration to create his paintings.” His says that his goal as an artist is to “touch people of all faiths, to bring peace, and joy into their lives through the images he creates.”