Thomas Kinkade calls himself The Painter Of Light™, although a more accurate descriptor would be The Painter Of Those Giant, Schmaltzy Prints People Hang Behind Their Sofas™. Kinkade's subjects always look as if they were painted from the reflection in God's smiling eyes, rather than from life. Everything is always magical, and soft, and vague, and suffused with a heavenly glow. Even Nascar:
In short, if you replaced Kinkade's paints with Velveeta, no one would be able to tell the difference.
Kinkade is the Josh Groban of artists–or rather, Groban is the Thomas Kinkade of music–which is to say that they're both uber-cheesy, free of any kind of vision besides "Let's just make this pleasant," and beloved by moms and QVC shoppers. Naturally, they're both wildly popular. Actually, Groban seems to have at least some sense of humor about his popularity and his music–whereas Kinkade clearly does not. In truth, Kinkcade's paintings are more like visual muzak.
Recently, Kinkcade branched out from producing paintings that will eventually end up on night lights or other generic gifts for grandmas, to making movies with the (straight-to-DVD) release of Thomas Kinkade's Christmas Cottage. Vanity Fair dug up a list of sixteen guidelines Kinkcade gave the movie's director and crew in order to achieve "the Thomas Kinkade Look." In case you're wondering, yes, sixteen guidelines is way too many when the Thomas Kinkade look can be summed up with just one sentence: "Make everything look as if God just cried tears of joy over it."
A few highlights:
11) Hidden spaces. My paintings always feature trails that dissolve into mysterious areas, patches of light that lead the eye around corners, pathways, open gates, etc. The more we can feature these devices to lead the eye into mysterious spaces, the better.