Selling the Painter of Light™

In a tasteful but non-descript art gallery hangs a series of large oil paintings. Dating from the early- to mid-1980s, they are confident, handsome mountain panoramas in the grand tradition of Albert Bierstadt, displaying painstaking craftsmanship and an unmistakable artistic gift.

The walls nearby, by contrast, are filled with paint-by-number-style landscapes depicting generic cottages, garish sunsets and crashing surf. These cloying greeting-card images, painted in the mid-'90s, are the work of the very same artist.

What happened in the intervening 10 years? To understand, we need to examine the transformation of a painter named Thomas Kinkade into a brand name: the Painter of Light™.

The Speed of Lite

Mopping his brow with one hand and briskly scrawling his signature across the backs of canvases with the other, Thomas Kinkade works the eye of his current promotional storm like Martha Stewart on steroids.

"My work reflects a slower pace in the midst of a frenzied world," he rhapsodized during a pit stop on his current promotional tour. "We do eight cities in a weekend." The irony of this revelation, in light of his claim to be an alternative to frenzy, appears to be lost on the trademarked illustrator, whose wife and brood of blonde daughters -- identically dressed in Victorian frocks -- accompany him everywhere.

Nor does he mention that this yearlong marathon of cross-country appearances is designed to boost sales, which are starting to flatten in response to the current economic downturn.

"My work is an icon of hope -- an antidote to CNN," Kinkade beams, modeling metaphors in front of the video camera taping the interview. A big, beefy man in his mid-40s, Kinkade is a restless package of strong convictions. His face contains no softness.

"My work is about foundational life values, the peace that comes from nature when life was simpler." Leaving no cliché unturned in the sermon he has delivered many times to the media, Kinkade pauses only to adjust his belt and look upward as if expecting the right phrase to be handed down personally from the Almighty.

Kinkade says he deplores the "cult of the artistic ego" -- yet more than 400 Thomas Kinkade Signature Galleries are in place worldwide, splashing his name and boyish grin on every possible marketable item. High-tech disturbs Kinkade, who proudly disavows ownership of a television. This personal creed has not prevented him from working the airways each month pitching his inspirational collectibles on QVC, the home-shopping network.

"People would rather sit in the sun than surf the net," he theorizes. Nonetheless, a few clicks at the fully loaded thomaskinkade.com website will put you in the driver's seat of a "Classic Series" reproduction for around $300 -- framed. Populist to the core, Kinkade offers his work in a dizzying range of price points, from $10 coffee mugs and $20 screen savers, all the way to $1,500 signed canvas prints highlighted by the master himself. And Kinkade has recently lent his name to a new gated community development of $400,000 homes in Vallejo, California, where home and hearth look very much like, well, a safe, secure Kinkade reproduction.

Repro Man

Part Elmer Gantry, part Donald Trump, Thomas Kinkade is an all-American success story. Born in the small California city of Placerville, he was raised by a single mother after his father left the family. It's a story he bitterly loves to tell.

"I was an at-risk kid if anyone was. I knew the pain of a broken home, but I could draw. And that gave me self- esteem."

Self-esteem and a ticket out of his backwater hometown and on to study painting at UC-Berkeley. Today, Kinkade is a high-profile, born-again Christian who peppers his catalog blurbs and promotional homilies with bits of New Testament scripture.