Thomas Kinkade Popular Books
Thomas Kinkade Biography & Facts
William Thomas Kinkade III (January 19, 1958 – April 6, 2012) was an American painter of popular realistic, pastoral, and idyllic subjects. He is notable for achieving success during his lifetime with the mass marketing of his work as printed reproductions and other licensed products by means of the Thomas Kinkade Company. According to Kinkade's company, one in every 20 American homes owned a copy of one of his paintings. Kinkade described himself as a "Painter of Light", a phrase he protected by trademark. Kinkade was criticized for some of his behavior and business practices; art critics faulted his work for being "kitsch". Kinkade died of "acute intoxication" from alcohol and the drug diazepam at the age of 54. Early life William Thomas Kinkade was born on January 19, 1958, in Sacramento County, California. He grew up in the town of Placerville, graduated from El Dorado High School in 1976, and attended the University of California, Berkeley, and Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Some of the people who mentored and taught Kinkade prior to college were Charles Bell and Glenn Wessels. Wessels encouraged Kinkade to go to the University of California at Berkeley. Kinkade's relationship with Wessels is the subject of a semi-autobiographical movie released during 2008, Christmas Cottage. After two years of general education at Berkeley, Kinkade transferred to the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Career During June 1980, Kinkade spent a summer traveling across the United States with his college friend James Gurney. The two of them finished their journey in New York and secured a contract with Guptill Publications to produce a sketching handbook. Two years later they produced a book, The Artist's Guide to Sketching, which was one of Guptill Publications' best-sellers that year. The success of the book resulted in both working for Ralph Bakshi Studios where they created background art for the 1983 animated feature movie Fire and Ice. While working on the movie, Kinkade began to explore the depiction of light and of imagined worlds. After the movie, Kinkade worked as a painter, selling his originals in galleries throughout California. Artistic themes and style Recurring features of Kinkade's paintings are their pastel colors and brilliant illumination of the scene. Rendered with idealistic values of American scene painting, his works often portray bucolic and idyllic settings, such as gardens, streams, stone cottages, lighthouses and Main Streets. His hometown of Placerville (where his works are much displayed) was the inspiration for many of his street and snow scenes. He also depicted various Christian themes, including the Christian cross and churches. His country scenes rarely depict people, a point that he frequently received questions about. Kinkade said he was emphasizing the value of simple pleasures and that his intent was to communicate inspirational messages through his paintings. A self-described "devout Christian" (even giving all four of his children the middle name "Christian"), Kinkade believed he gained his inspiration from his religious beliefs and that his work was intended to include a moral dimension. Many pictures include specific chapter-and-verse allusions to Bible passages. In 2009, he painted a portrait of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the cover of that year's Indianapolis 500 race program that included details of the crowd, hiding among them the figures of Norman Rockwell and Dale Earnhardt. He also painted the farewell portrait for Yankee Stadium. Concerning the Indianapolis Motor Speedway painting, Kinkade said: The passion I have is to capture memories, to evoke the emotional connection we have to an experience. I came out here and stood up on the bleachers and looked around, and I saw all the elements of the track. It was empty at the time. But I saw the stadium, how the track laid out, the horizon, the skyline of Indianapolis and the Pagoda. I saw it all in my imagination. I began thinking, 'I want to get this energy — what I call the excitement of the moment — into this painting.' As I began working on it, I thought, 'Well you have this big piece of asphalt, the huge spectator stands; I've got to do something to get some movement.' So I just started throwing flags into it. It gives it kind of a patriotic excitement. Artist and Guggenheim Fellow Jeffrey Vallance has spoken about Kinkade's devout religious themes and their reception in the art world: This is another area that the contemporary art world has a hard time with, that I find interesting. He expresses what he believes and puts that in his art. That is not the trend in the high-art world at the moment, the idea that you can express things spiritually and be taken seriously ... It is always difficult to present serious religious ideas in an art context. That is why I like Kinkade. It is a difficult thing to do. Essayist Joan Didion is a representative critic of Kinkade's style: A Kinkade painting was typically rendered in slightly surreal pastels. It typically featured a cottage or a house of such insistent coziness as to seem actually sinister, suggestive of a trap designed to attract Hansel and Gretel. Every window was lit, to lurid effect, as if the interior of the structure might be on fire. Didion compared the "Kinkade Glow" to the luminism of 19th-century painter Albert Bierstadt, who sentimentalized the infamous Donner Pass in his Donner Lake from the Summit. She saw "unsettling similarities" between the two painters and worried that Kinkade's treatment of the Sierra Nevada, The Mountains Declare His Glory, similarly ignored the tragedy of the forced dispersal of Yosemite's Sierra Miwok Indians during the Gold Rush, by including an imaginary Miwok camp as what he calls "an affirmation that man has his place, even in a setting touched by God's glory." Mike McGee, director of the CSUF Grand Central Art Center at California State University, Fullerton, wrote of the Thomas Kinkade Heaven on Earth exhibition: Looking just at the paintings themselves it is obvious that they are technically competent. Kinkade's genius, however, is in his capacity to identify and fulfill the needs and desires of his target audience—he cites his mother as a key influence and archetypal audience — and to couple this with savvy marketing ... If Kinkade's art is principally about ideas, and I think it is, it could be suggested that he is a Conceptual artist. All he would have to do to solidify this position would be to make an announcement that the beliefs he has expounded are just Duchampian posturing to achieve his successes. But this will never happen. Kinkade earnestly believes in his faith in God and his personal agenda as an artist. Authenticity Kinkade's production method has been described as "a semi-industrial process in which low-level apprentices embellish a prefab base provided by Kinkade." Kinkade reportedly designed and painted all of his works, which .... Discover the Thomas Kinkade popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Thomas Kinkade books.
Best Seller Thomas Kinkade Books of 2024
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A New Leaf
Thomas KinkadeIn this inspirational novel in Thomas Kinkade's New York Times bestselling series, two unexpected newcomers to Cape Light will teach its residents to put the past behind them and s...
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Home Song
Thomas Kinkade & Katherine SpencerIn this inspiring novel, worldrenowned “Painter of Light”™ Thomas Kinkade brings us back to Cape Lightthe little town we know by heart…The charming seacoast village of Cape Light i...
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A Christmas Visitor
Thomas Kinkade & Katherine SpencerIn this novel in Thomas Kinkade and Katherine Spencer’s holiday series, the residents of Cape Light discover joy in the most unexpected packages this Christmas… Molly knows...
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The Way Home
Katherine SpencerThe shores of Angel Island are awash with love in this novel in Thomas Kinkade's New York Times bestselling series. Claire North understands how Angel Island sets the rhythm...
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A Season of Angels
Thomas Kinkade & Katherine SpencerThe residents of Cape Light and Angel Island will learn to speak what’s in their hearts this holiday season in this heartwarming novel in the New York Times bestselling series. Ad...
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Christmas Treasures
Thomas Kinkade & Katherine SpencerThe Christmas season is full of shopping and holiday cheer, but in this novel in the Cape Light series, finding one’s true purpose is the greatest gift of all… Reverend Ben ...
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A Wandering Heart
Thomas Kinkade & Katherine SpencerAll the stars come out in Angel Island in this charming, inspirational novel from New York Times bestselling authors Thomas Kinkade and Katherine Spencer.A movie crew arrives to sh...
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Salammbo
Gustave FlaubertAn epic story of lust, cruelty, and sensuality, this historical novel is set in Carthage in the days following the First Punic War with Rome.
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Thomas Kinkade
Thomas KinkadeWhat I paint touches on foundational life values. Home, family, peacefulness. And one of the messages I try to constantly get across is slow it down and enjoy every moment." Thomas...
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Harbor of the Heart
Katherine SpencerThe people of Angel Island find a safe harbor and the gift of hope in this inspirational novel from New York Times bestselling authors Thomas Kinkade and Katherine Spencer. Liza Ma...
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A Genius for Failure
Paul O'KeeffeHaydon's first attempt at suicide ended when the low calibre bullet fired from his pistol fractured his skull but failed to penetrate his brain. His second attempt also failed: a...
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Cape Light
Thomas Kinkade & Katherine SpencerInspired by the artistic vision of worldrenowned landscape painter Thomas Kinkadeand imbued with the light of his uplifting messagethis heartwarming novel introduces us to the quai...
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British As A Second Language
David BennunDavid Bennun had lived in Africa his whole life. At the age of 18 he came to Britain, the mother country. The country he had read about in Punch magazine or seen in films like Char...
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A Christmas Star
Thomas Kinkade & Katherine SpencerA Christmas light shines bright in the midst of the darkest winter in this novel in Thomas Kinkade and Katherine Spencer’s Cape Light series.With Christmas only a few weeks away, S...
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The Inn at Angel Island
Thomas Kinkade & Katherine SpencerNew York Times bestselling authors Thomas Kinkade and Katherine Spencer present the first novel in the Angel Island series, set on an island a stone's skip away from Cape Ligh...
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Billion Dollar Painter
G. Eric Kuskey & Bettina GiloisThe unbelievable true story of artist Thomas Kinkade, selfdescribed “Painter of Light,” and the dramatic rise – and fall – of his billiondollar gallery and licensing...
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The Gathering Place
Thomas Kinkade & Katherine SpencerThis moving novel in Thomas Kinkade and Katherine Spencer's New York Times bestselling Cape Light series takes us back to the tightly knit community on the New England coast that h...
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Winter In Volcano
Gary Kissick'Her name was Felicia, a name Cullen liked. He wondered as he sipped his beer, what ancestral dance had produced such impish racoon eyes eyes she was fond of hiding behind over...
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Mini Guide to Common Sense Retirement for the Blue Collar Man
Thomas A KinkadeThis book is being written to give the common man a simpler way of planning for retirement. Rather than complicate the process it is designed to offer suggestions on planning retir...
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The Wedding Promise
Thomas Kinkade & Katherine SpencerNew York Times bestselling authors Thomas Kinkade and Katherine Spencer present an inspiratinal novel in the series set on Angel Island, a place where anything is possible, even th...