Thomas Kinkade Parodies
I'm fascinated by popular genres and their ability to trigger fresh pictorial ideas. In the past I've used folk art, amateur painting, cartoons--from comic book icons like Dick Tracy to pornographic caricatures of Mussolini--vernacular decorations and hand-painted signs (many found on my sojourns to Mexico). A few years back the paintings of the late Thomas Kinkade, probably the most popular painter of our time (or maybe any time!), suggested to me a fruitful stepping off point for a series of landscape paintings that would in some way parody the sweet nostalgic mood and the pseudo-impressionistic style. The typical Kinkade painting is an over-ripe, crazily dappled affair that manages to combine ridiculously exaggerated impressionistic light effects with sudden shifts into the blackest chiaroscuro, the sworn enemy of Impressionism. The whole image is usually topped off with an inexplicable inner radiance that made his paintings seem "spiritual" to millions of his religiously prone buyers and fans.
In any case, it seemed to me to be rich material for aesthetic transformation. I went for Hallmark-like notes in such pieces as The Four Sessions. In one version I painted over a compilation of Kinkade winter scenes, complete with inquisitive deer peering at a bright cottage in the snow like they actually gave a snort. At times I opted to use actual quotes-- from Kinkade's rich arsenal of corny effects. In this way I was able to merge Kinkade motifs with my own organizing principles. I would take a typical glowing cottage and re-paint it, altering shapes, color and composition or juxtapose it with such unrelated things as a Cezanne group of trees or, of all things, a Winslow Homer rooster in a courtyard. I would pull out a single Kinkade element--a bridge, a stone walkway, some fluff of spring foliage--and place it in a new context. In this way I could make a convincing conjunction of subject-matter and the formal arrangement. I also felt free to add outside stylistic interpretations, like the splotchy pointillistic frame of Night Bridge With Orange Surround (above, oil on canvas, 2013). By cutting, joining and pasting a number of untouched Kinkade scenes, as in the ten-foot-high version of The Four Seasons, I made a composition with nary a brushstroke added.
Kinkade called himself, in a trademarked phrase no less, "The Painter of Light" (or lite, as would be more appropriate). Monet might have had a few choice words to say about this designation, but poor Kinkade evidently was unaware of the exclusiveness that the definite article "the" proclaimed. Or then again, maybe he was totally aware that by calling himself THE Painter of Light instead of just A Painter of Light that it would help propel him into phenomenal commercial success. All this bucolic wonderment made me long to plant some natural disaster, like a flood or one of those peaceable cottages struck by lightning.
In any case, it seemed to me to be rich material for aesthetic transformation. I went for Hallmark-like notes in such pieces as The Four Sessions. In one version I painted over a compilation of Kinkade winter scenes, complete with inquisitive deer peering at a bright cottage in the snow like they actually gave a snort. At times I opted to use actual quotes-- from Kinkade's rich arsenal of corny effects. In this way I was able to merge Kinkade motifs with my own organizing principles. I would take a typical glowing cottage and re-paint it, altering shapes, color and composition or juxtapose it with such unrelated things as a Cezanne group of trees or, of all things, a Winslow Homer rooster in a courtyard. I would pull out a single Kinkade element--a bridge, a stone walkway, some fluff of spring foliage--and place it in a new context. In this way I could make a convincing conjunction of subject-matter and the formal arrangement. I also felt free to add outside stylistic interpretations, like the splotchy pointillistic frame of Night Bridge With Orange Surround (above, oil on canvas, 2013). By cutting, joining and pasting a number of untouched Kinkade scenes, as in the ten-foot-high version of The Four Seasons, I made a composition with nary a brushstroke added.
Kinkade called himself, in a trademarked phrase no less, "The Painter of Light" (or lite, as would be more appropriate). Monet might have had a few choice words to say about this designation, but poor Kinkade evidently was unaware of the exclusiveness that the definite article "the" proclaimed. Or then again, maybe he was totally aware that by calling himself THE Painter of Light instead of just A Painter of Light that it would help propel him into phenomenal commercial success. All this bucolic wonderment made me long to plant some natural disaster, like a flood or one of those peaceable cottages struck by lightning.
Flood With Floating Roof, acrylic on canvas, 2013, 39x13
Garden of Heavenly Rays, acrylic on canvas, 2013
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Death Mask Ikon, archival pigment print, 2013
The above is borrowed from a Kinkade painting of Christ that I superimposed with a likeness of The Painter of Light himself. I added the glowing orbs to indicate the artist's depiction of everything in religious terms, an attitude that I imagine carried over to his person. Note this: the title here is an anagram of the artist's name. |
The Four Seasons, acrylic over pigment print, 2013.
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The Eternal Beacon, acrylic on canvas, 2014. In the collection of
Jonathan and Jennifer Attea
This is a large three-panel painting showcasing my peculiar
version of pointillism. It is made up of randomly deployed screened
dots--more like blobs, really--and more refined textures, all knitted .
together by hand-painted passages
Jonathan and Jennifer Attea
This is a large three-panel painting showcasing my peculiar
version of pointillism. It is made up of randomly deployed screened
dots--more like blobs, really--and more refined textures, all knitted .
together by hand-painted passages
Left: Cottage Industry (Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue), oil and acrylic on five assembled canvases, 2012-13.
This painting is a good example of how distortion, heightened color and the wiping away of all volume-producing dark shadows can transform the typical (aren't they all "typical"?) Kinkade cottage into something approaching an abstract painting. The subtitle is from a great (and immense) painting by Barnett Newman. The painting was Newman's brilliant challenge to the the proscription of the time (the 1960s) that Mondrian's primary color scheme would get one nowhere.
Left: Doubled Bridge With Sunrise, oil over pigment print collaged on canvas, 2012.
The theme of the arched brick bridge provided me the clearest path to a
minimalist presentation in which the subject-matter gives way to
to the abstract conditions of the painting.
In a number of pieces I attempted to employ the Kinkade image more or less intact. In Morning Mist, Night Moon I did some minimal adjustment to the value scheme and some Photoshop blurring and added a cutout overlay from another source image--this one from a wall paper mural in a local private club. The soft pink rectangle that backs the whole ensemble (I hope) sets the nostalgic mood, echoing but without Kinkade's saccharine sweetness.
Left: Morning Haze, Night Moon, collage, acrylic, archival pigment print, 2012.