Montmarte

   "My artist's heart beats faster in Montmartre, surrounded as I am by the heritage of giants. When I set up my easel and canvas on the sidewalks of what was, a century ago, the artistic capital of the world, I know that I follow in the steps of Toulouse Lautrec, Manet, and all the others who made this section of Paris the symbol of the artistic lifestyle. Happily, Parisian women still stroll the boulevards with parasols in hand, so that my Montmartre retains its historic flavor."____  Thomas Kinkade

   Once again the focus here is on the words you are to take to your heart, not the picture you are actually looking at - which actually is not particularly offensive. Unlike 95% of his stuff.
   There's really nothing to criticize here, and, also, nothing to get excited about. It is what could most favorably be called a "study." A "study" is a sort of practice version the painter makes sometimes to see if he thinks he has the energy and ability to really go to work on it.
   He's painted a simple scene here with none of his usual nonsense. At least in the painting. Now let's look at the words!!! His artist's heart beats faster? Where does he keep it, in a jar? And what artist's heart is it? It can't be his own, he doesn't seem to have one. At least from what I've seen of his output. Don't see no art in any of it. It's probably just the cigar that's making your heart beat faster, dude.
   He mentions the giants of French Impressionism like he is one. Dude, you just went to France, used a fake, or at least a different, name, and painted some scenes in a very lackluster, ordinary way that any weekend painter dabbler would do.
   He's following in the steps of Lautrec and Monet only literally. So you can't get him for lying. But holy shit,you ain't even in the ballpark, or in the city where the ballpark is located, regarding these guys artistically. I mean, this is amazingly pompous crap even for amazingly pompous crap crap, which Kinkade excels at producing.

Sunlit Garden In Bendyland

   "Sunlit Garden, painted under my Impressionist brush name, Robert Girrard, exhibits a freedom of brushstroke and boldness of color that embraces the style of the French Impressionist masters. Girrard, like Kinkade, loves massive old stone and steel gates, intricate iron fences, and the equally intricate shadows they cast. We both love the flowers of spring - in this case, roses and dogwood festooning the grounds. And we both think that a fully enclosed courtyard is an irresistible, intimate space. I can only hope that you will join me in my Sunlit Garden.

-Thomas Kinkade"

   I have included this, not so much for the ordinariness of the painting but for the weirdness of the blurb accompanying it. He talks about himself not only in the third person, but as two people in the third person!!!!!!!!!!
   You know, at times, when I am not thinking of Thomas Kinkade as the world's most accomplished bullshitter and snakeoil salesman and carnival pitchman, I honestly find myself thinking he is a deranged mental patient who has somehow tapped-in to a kind of universal Stupidity Gene inherent in the human species. Sometimes I think he has merely, and quite innocently, connected himself to some species-wide mutation of good sense gone mad, like a curse - it is as though he has wired-in to a curse on mankind and was rewarded by mankind's sacrifice of itself to him. It is like he is the savior and redeemer of the idiotic. And that he has come by this position in all innocence and with no premeditation. I mean, look at him carry on about himselves. Or theirselves. Whatever he or they is:....    
   "I....Girrard....Kinkade....Thomas......Robert.....we both.....the two of us...we love..... we do....we see...there is me.... there is him.... we are both here....we both paint....we both shit, sometimes he goes in first, then sometimes I go first....."
   WHAT THE FLYING MOTHER FUCK!!!!! WHO COULD BE SO FUCKING SELF ABSORBED THAT THEY HAVE TO DOUBLE THEMSELVES TO SOAK UP ALL THE EXCESS SELF ADULATION!!! HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!!
   He's amazing. By any standard of self-absorbtion, he's amazing. Him and Mia Michaels have to breed. They have to breed and create the antichrist who will deceive and destroy the world in a bucketload of bullshit never before seen or imagined. Then Jesus will come with a firehose and clean things clean with great blasts of water after everything has rotted under a pile and pestilence of lying deceitful horse shit and crap. And then everything will be clean again. Oh, and not to nitpick, but does anyone see a garden here? Shouldn't it be called Sunlit Bricks? Whatever you say, Thom. The moon's a balloon if you say so, Thom.
   And before I forget.....a brush name??? What the fuck is that! I never heard of that! I never heard of a painter using a "brush name." I have heard of pen names. I don't understand them but I have heard of them. But a brush name? That's a new one. A real new one. What was the thought process do you suppose going on inside his head that resulted in Thomas Kinkade deciding that while in Europe he had to use a different name. Did he use the different name on just his canvases? Or was it on his passport too. He can't even do normal things normal. Everything has to be a wondrous rejoiceful mystery with him because his soul is magnified, like Jesus' mom's. He is just an exuberance of delightfulness in all he does. "I shall change my name on this painting! I am too talented to be confined to just one identity!" I guess all charlatans do this actually: use aliases. Maybe it's not so beatific after all.

Kinkade And The Clintons

   Here's how you know Kinkade is a worthless painter: the Clintons think he's good! The Clintons have the aesthetic awareness of barnyard horse troughs. A Mombassa fly-covered cannibal  with his face in the ass of a donkey and drinking its piss has more cultural awareness and sensitivity than these two bovine-brained thieves. And Kinkade looks like he's got them both figured out. I have to admit the Clintons look a bit lost in the company of a painting, even one as shitty as the one on display because doltish as Kinkade is he is leagues ahead in intelligence and smarts - and maybe even honesty - than the other two sharks.

The Blessing of Summer In Wackyberg

   This painting - or # 9,000 in a run of 25,000 lithos, or whatever number it is - is actually not too oppressively congested with two dimensional sludge, for a Thomas Kinkade painting. It is almost observable without wincing or feeling like you have entered a land of psychotic teenage girls living in the attic with dusty dolls and deranged smiles on their eternally silent faces as they look at you, each with a dead infant in their arms they are trying to rock to sleep while giggling unnervingly.
   This painting, unlike his claustrophobic "gardens" and "gates" and garishly vile miniature-golf bridges, is not like those. It almost has the pleasant freshness of an illustration in a 2nd grade school reader. "This is the story of Billy Goes Fishing!!" Something like that. I mean, don't get me wrong, it still has that crappy reflectance of bad craftsmanship, as though it is painted on glass or metal. I mean it comes nowhere close to demonstrating even one micron of painting or artistic talent: the mill looks like a fucking toy and the body of water looks like a greasy oilslick. But there is actually an open space between the lackluster tree and the condensed stone structure and above the building that seems to have some breathable air in it, or, if nothing else, a place to flee to to escape the rest of the painting.
   And the water crashing over the rocks, seeming to fly upward into the air as if from a conduit, in fact, has a kind of cleansing aspect to it, as though it has gathered a lot of the excess paint in the picture and poured it off into the black eerie lagoon below.
   In fact, it is this very waterway that I would like to focus my attention on. There is such a thing in all art forms called "license." Artistic license is what, in Western Culture, is the concept or practice or allowance or decree or some similar sort of vague idea of "permission" that "permits" the artist to - if he wants to - render null and void every law of Nature if he so desires to "make his point," or - if he is not making a point - to "do his thing, you go, girl." That sort of thing. The viewer, in other words, closes his own personal rulebook and becomes a willing sponge to drink-in the artist's effort to visibly depict his own viewpoints or expectations or ideas or convictions, or as L. Ron Hubbard might say, him and the viewer are "getting into the game." That sort of thing. Still - we do hold the artist to some
conventions and agreements within the silent contract between the creator of the art and the audience. Whether the audience is just the artist himself alone, or another person.
   As L. Ron Hubbard also says in his very interesting short treatise on art, art is communication. Communication involves two people at least. Before you think I am touting Elron's Empire of Avarice, he also said Jesus Christ is an implant in our heads and that he never existed. I know of no other being in earth history he has ever said this about. Only Jesus never existed, to Ron. He never existed!! Even the Jews - Jesus' killers - say quite matter of factly that of course Jesus existed. Nobody in the business of "historian" denies that Jesus actually lived and died as a recorded fact of recorded history. Nobody denies the historical fact and reality of the man Jesus. Only Elron says.....he never existed!!!
   It's, like, it is very important to him personally that Jesus never existed. And actually I know why he must deny the reality of Jesus' life and existence but right now I am discussing this Thomas Kinkade painting and I do not wish to be interrupted. Whoever it was that got me sidetracked, no more questions, I have work to do here.
   So an artist is entitled to "do his thing." He can also expect to get ridiculed and shredded for it whether or not he fucks up in the process. And so it is, therefore, that I would like now to discuss this waterway that is gushing like an Army Corps of Engineers-constructed diversion tunnel at Hoover Fucking Dam.
   This river or creek is an anomaly even in a cover painting for Astounding Stories.
   The river comes from two different directions such that it either divides at the mill or else it comes from two different waterways. If it divides at the mill it has to be eating-away at the terrain upon which the mill stands because this is no babbling brook or thought-relaxing rivulet meandering through the tranquility of time. It's a fucking monster. It could turn that waterwheel and a couple of turbines besides. Leave it to Thomas Kinkade to fuck-up Nature in ways that no other artist could ever manage to do even if on mescaline. It's like he is some form of barely-functional imbecile who has no understanding of even the simplest aspects of the "nature" that he so reveres and admires and slaughters in his paintings.
   What the fuck kind of river is this? It is surging with such force from all directions at this location... what keeps the mill from being washed away in this annual snowmelt tsunami? I mean if this is summer, what the fuck happens here in the fucking Spring? It's gotta be like a fucking
typhoon at this location when april rolls around.
   As you may or may not have noticed, the water enters the waterwheel from a structure on the second-floor level on the right of the building. How is the water from the river getting way the fuck up there? Kinkade says "Don't know, don't want to know."
   The sun is on the left, judging from the shadow of the tree, but the inexplicable rainbow on this summer day is dead-ahead. A phenomenon impossible on this planet. The rainbow would have to be 90 degrees to our right where there is no image, based on where the sun appears to be. Even in a science fiction cover this is ridiculous, as any fantasy painter would agree. But Kinkade's customers are unlike any known creatures in any known or unknown scenario of life, either on this planet or on any other. They are like idiot androids, devoid of judgment or discernment or intelligence or experience or education or sense. Their money is every bit as spendable as Einstein's or Neils Bohr's and that's what counts in the Kinkade Kanvas Krap Kult.
   Someone really needs to do a PhD research paper on the nature of a Kinkade Kustomer. A full blown exploration of the nature of the faulty psyche that says "Ok," to the salesman closing the deal on a Kinkade horror. It would be the first doctoral thesis to hit the NY Times best seller list.
   This painting is actually exhausting me with it's bewildering mixture of near-pleasantness combined with its flagrant abuses of God's Natural Laws. Even by Satan's rigid standards of perversion and nightmare this is a mind-boggler.
   I would like to add, speaking of L. Ron Hubbard, that not only did he say Jesus never existed - he also says that he did exist and that he was a boy-lover. So whether he existed or not, he gets a large barbed pole rammed up his ass by Elron. So take that, Jesus; whether or not you existed; for as far as Elron is concerned you are shit, whether you are real or whether you are not. I would call that quite a hatred, hating not only the reality of Jesus but also the non reality of Jesus. He hates the very idea of Jesus. I wonder what Jesus did to piss Elron off so bad he hates him as a reality and as a myth. Wow.
   I would also like to add - getting back to the painting -  that the millhouse depicted, where murders abound and where the rapist's laughs and the victims screams go unheeded - it is built apparently in the Ccenter of the river. It could clearly accommodate two waterwheels; or maybe even three, there is that much water flowing. It could house many more waterwheels at least for the short time it will remain standing before it is washed away when the two channels of flowing caustic soda eat-away the foundations where the bodies are buried. I mean this is not "artistic license." This is "How brazenly insulting architecturally and engineeringly can I get before my mutton-headed customers catch on that I am fucking with them like no bullshitter in history." Apparently pretty brazen. 100 million dollars worth of brazen. And people wonder why a Muslim Kenyan illegal Marxist homosexual is President of the United States.

Silver and Gold And Strontium 90

"Silver and Gold is the first still life I've ever shared with my collectors. This exquisite assemblage of golden blooms in an elegant silver vase gives me the sense of exuberant repose that I get from my most satisfying landscapes. In fact, I treat this still life as a landscape in miniature.

— Thomas Kinkade"

Thomas Kinkade not only does horrible paintings of gazebos and elf houses and lifeless backdrops to Punch and Judy theaters, he also does horrific still lifes. This is the first one he has ever "shared with his collectors." I guess by this he means he foots part of the bill. Or maybe he means he gives the lithos away. Or maybe he means this is the first time anyone outside of his relentlessly mentioned Nanette and his four housedog-named daughters has seen one. I can only speculate the horrors contained in the ones still hidden from view if this is the first one to ever be allowed outside. I do not think anyone with even a fifth grader's familiarity with Actual Art would deny that this is probably one of the worst still life paintings ever created. It takes worthless to its most perfect realization. Using the original of this image as an elevated platform to keep your laptop provided with an underneath airflow would be putting this painting to a better use than looking at it. It has absolutely NOTHING to offer anyone who gazes upon it other than a moment's meaningless relief from a cursory scan of the wall surrounding it. It would be worthy of a Motel 6 diversion from the desolation of the room itself. It would be good to make a Motel 6 room look better. However a cat nailed inside out to the wall of a Motel 6 would also serve the same function. I am going to have to assume that that tilted, warped, oddly built vase on the right is the "silver" part of this painting - which looks like it's made of wood: a wooden vase; which is what it looks like; a vase made out of whitewashed fencing material - I am assuming that is the "silver" portion referred to in the well-thought-out title. And the "gold" must be those yellow carnations behind it that look like exploded baby chicks that just took a gander at the painting Kinkade had put them in and just blew up. Are these items ON anything? Well, maybe they're on the floor. This is the first still life that the Master has deigned to allow outside and perhaps he has not seen the more or less traditional practice inherent in the still life painting
unofficial rulebook that you have an identifiable platform for the objects to be on. The reason for this I will conjecture since I am not an art historian: I would conjecture that the reason the table is always included is to demonstrate that the artist is indeed versatile-enough a craftsman to contrast the "lifeless," constructed-by-man, artifact, with the living artifact constructed by God: a Being who Kinkade never tires of telling us is a frequent visitor to his home. The attempt therefore is to
imbue each element, the man made and the God made, with their appropriate resonances. It is also often a sheer demonstration of virtuosity, into which one need not usually search for meaning or mystery or enigma or mannered effect - though these things can be present, it really makes no difference. But they are not supposed to look like "stuff on the floor," which is what this lazily-painted heap of items basically is. Now, if Kinkade knew who Cezanne was, which is unlikely, he would say "His still lifes are a lot worse than mine." But Cezanne's still lifes aren't really still lifes. They are intrusions into a new dimension of art history. A place Kinkade will never be visiting. Cezanne painted "weight." He painted "gravity." He painted
"the solidity of even an orange or a petal." He was breaking new ground. Kinkade breaks no more than wind from his ass when he paints.This still life is SO bad it is actually difficult to lampoon it. It is just a very ordinary, badly rendered, painting of some flowers and a vase. And what is the "fruit" in the foreground? You tell me. It is completely unidentifiable. One of the virtuoso things painters of loose fruit pride themselves on is displaying via technique and the mush called "paint" - succulence and deliciousness, often. It's like an exciting game they play for themselves. A grape that sings with grapeness in the room. A lemon that makes your cheek glands drain saliva because the sourness fills your mind.
This drab empty flat lifeless spiritless slapdash warm-up, as still lifes go, especially from a painter making millions of dollars a year, is an abomination. He is going to share this with his collectors. His collectors must be insensitive, punishment-loving psychos with no work ethic if they don't whack him with a folded-up newspaper and sent him back to the easel after this insult. Does he even LOOK at the paintings he describes?? The golden blooms in an elegant silver vase? They're in a brown smudge pot in the back. Is that a silver vase? Isn't that lumber-construction with a lid on it supposed to be glass? What the fuck is he describing? A different painting? People say I am picking on the guy. Well, is there some other option?? I mean, at this point I'll listen to anything, my fucking head is spinning. And what does he mean he treats this painting as a landscape in miniature. Why does that make it so. It is not a landscape in miniature, no mater how you treat it, Thom. It's a bad still life. It's not a landscape. Nothing holds to reality with this guy. Reality is whatever thomas Kinkade says it is. He's like Obama: you're not supposed to disagree with the guy no matter how bizarre his utterances about creation. I guess what I am supposed to do, reading this, is say "Well, that's how I will treat it too, then! It's a landscape in miniature!" And what if I did say that? Why would it matter? There would then be two people, not one, making weird pronouncements. Kinkade's world is like Bizarro Land. That would certainly explain the painting style.

The Thomas Kinkade Blog

Thomas Kinkade actually has a blog. http://www.thomsblog.com/ You might want to bring a shovel. Make that a backhoe.

Hidden Arbor, Crouching Demon

"I often seek out a quiet place to meditate and pray; a special retreat like Hidden Arbor. This marvelous waterfall, with its myriad rivulets and streams; the climbing flowers on a romantic arbor is a little touch of heaven.

— Thomas Kinkade"

This Kinkade fellow is one praying motherfucker. He prays more than St. Thoman Aquinas. I would LOVE to hear one of those prayers: "Oh Father Satan, Ruler of Hell: I thank thee for creating humans so stupid. When you got Adam and Eve to fuck apes you created a race of morons out of a race of gods. And now you have given them to me to own. I can paint shit and sell it for gold. Jesus really fucked up when he turned down your offer of the world. I thank you for making the same offer to me. I couldn't say yes fast enough. I should really be painting your likenesses, not that ridiculous let's-not-make-a-deal Jew you chatted with out in the desert. Look what his refusal got him: nailed up HAHA LIKE ONE OF MY PAINTINGS! HAHAHAHAHAHA! And looking even uglier. Who thought THAT was possible. I have done very well by you, O Lord of Death; the spirit of your empty soul I have infused into all my work, as you can see. I look forward to our further partnership as we drag the science of aesthetics back to the stone age. Amen, O Mighty Lucy." Why would this be a quiet place to meditate and pray. It's a fucking maelstrom. How can rivulets and streams, even in "myriads," generate so much fucking white-water? It's a fucking Murchison Falls level of
violence being churned-up by what's coming over that ten foot hillock. In case you were not aware just from looking, incidentally, it's, as "Thom" puts it, a "marvelous" waterfall. Well, it sure is. It violates 20 laws of Nature.

Guardian Castle of Lucifer

"Guardian Castle, my collaboration with the brilliant miniaturist David Winter, marks the first time that I've ever worked with another artist. I was captivated by David's miniature castle sculpture—so grand and regal that it seemed to call for a heroic, naturalistic landscape as its proper setting. Anchored to its rugged hillside in England's mountain country, Guardian Castle commands the valley and peaceful village nestled below.

— Thomas Kinkade"

Buying a print of this thing will set you back more than a grand. For some reason. It can't be the art. Maybe it's printed on mink.
I can't take my eyes of the "stream" that has white water cascades. How it remains within it's channel against the massive rightward slope of the terrain actually makes my fingers shake with nervousness. I don't know what a "brilliant miniaturist" would be. I think it means "toymaker." Not toys that DO anything, you understand, toys that just stand there. I am having a VERY hard time understanding how this is a "collaboration." Did Mr. Winter paint some "highlights" onto it as Mr. Kinkade oft-times hires people to do? Then why aren't these other people "artist"s too? Maybe they're not "brilliant," so they just remain unartisted. There are a lot of power-packed words in the description of this cartoon, like grand and regal and anchored and rugged and commands, and I did not know England had "mountain country." What is this tall dwarf house guardian OF? Is it guarding the meaningless bridge down on the right that goes from one pile of rocks to another? Is it guardian of the invisible peaceful village down below? Couldn't this squeezed-together tall cottage just be gone-around? There seems to be LOTS of other ways for an invading army to get to the peaceful village and ransack its occupants and enslave its citizenry. Maybe a raiding party of only 5 people which would probably be enough to conquer it. The mighty regal majestic castle looks more appropriate for a quiet lunch of wine and cheese with a gay traveling companion. It can't house more than 4 people, I wouldn't think. How could you cram a defending war party in there to thwart an attack? They'd be hacking each other to pieces more than the enemy. It's more of a bed and breakfast mini-resort haven for a weekend by old people. What's with all the fucking drama in the "explanation." It's just a really shitty painting of a toy house in fairyland. THAT'S ALL IT IS.

Please Read This Important Interruption

This blog needs to be interrupted to bring you this important announcement from Thomas Kinkade Himself:



"Q: What is a Master Highlighting event?

A: At this event, we have one of Thom's Master Highlighters here to enhance each of the canvases purchased by this date.



Q: What is a Master Highlighter?

A: Master Highlighters are trained artists approved by Thomas Kinkade to enhance his limited edition artwork by adding additional oil paint to the areas of the canvas approved by Thom. This enhancement truly enhances the lighting effects of Thomas Kinkade's artwork on limited edition canvases making the light pop off of the canvas even more.



Q: How much does it cost?

A: There is no charge for this service.



Q: I live out of town and won't be able to attend. Can I get my canvas highlighted?

A: You DO NOT have to be present to have your canvas highlighted. We will have the canvas highlighted in your absence.



If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to call or email us.



Thanks,

The Original Thomas Kinkade Gallery in Placerville, CA"

Moonlit Village Where C'thulhu Sleeps

"In my travels throughout America I've noticed that churches are often built on a hillside or knoll as a means of emphasizing their presence in a town, and I find this to be a particularly poignant concept. These hillside churches, like lighthouses, are high up, so that, figuratively speaking, their light might be seen from afar. I wanted to capture a bit of that feel in my painting, Moonlit Village.

— Thomas Kinkade"

He's laying it on pretty thick here. If this scene exists somewhere in his "travels throughout America" it must be an America on Mars. I would like a more specific description of its location. It looks like a church in Switzerland. Or Canada. Or Germany. Or Austria. Or France. Or Norway. Or Russia. I have no idea where this would be in America. Thomas Kinkade must be filled with a spirituality that knows bounds only experienced by the holiest of men in China and India and Tibet that the geographical location of a church house that is at a higher elevation than the "town" is poignant to him. In fact, it's "particularly" poignant. The whole "concept" kind of throws him into a spiritual whirlwind of wonder and admiration and love. Now, I have never noticed that little scenic churches ACTUALLY ARE higher in geological elevation than other buildings in the townships in America that - I guess - are being spoken of here. I mean, is this really a building-practice that is commonly adhered to in little rural plaiinslands and scenic mountain vistas with narrow lakes between rows of mountain peaks here in the USA? I guess I just don't keep my eyes open. Is is possible that what he's saying is just bullshit?? No. That is not possible. OK, now, about this "moonlit" business. IS THAT THE MOON OF THE ANTAGABA STAR SYSTEM IN THE GAMPINAAK GALAXY WE'RE LOOKIN' AT THOM 'CAUSE IT'S PRETTY FUCKING GODDAMN BRIGHT!!!! You could do needlepoint in your tent in the woods with the lights out, camping under that moon 'cause that thing is a fucking blast furnace, let me tell ya. Can someone please tell me how a guy that paints a lifeless moonlit scene with not even one moonlit effect makes millions of dollars a year as an "artist"? There really must be a a miraculous Jesus still at work. Because this guy's life on easy street selling painted mulch to idiots is the greatest miracle since the Resurrection.

The Old Mission, Santa Barbara, Kindergarten Style

"Santa Barbara, California is often called, "The American Riviera." Yet even with its many art galleries and theaters, the most popular site in the city sees to be the Old Mission. Graceful and lovely Spanish architecture of the mission — over 200 years old — stands proud, gleaming in the golden California sun.

— Thomas Kinkade"

This is the worst painting of the Santa Barbara Mission I have ever seen. It might be the worst painting of the Santa Barbara Mission ever painted. This is not a fantasy cottage for retarded children to ogle and want to play in, this is a real actual place done in what the "painter" is likely to call a "realistic" manner or, being the optimistically-inclined-toward-his-own-limited-art-skills person that he is, he might call "impressionistic," or maybe "plein aire" if he knew that terminology. In fact, to help the fellow out here if he is having difficulty, it is a basic representational picture of the Mission when it was new. And it is a very bad basic representational picture of the Mission when it was new. Here he lays his skillessness, or his vaulting laziness, one or the other, right in front of you and dares you to not see what is there. And what is there is not very much. The building has absolutely no depth or any SENSE of depth. It is a movie facade. Maybe he hates Catholics. A lotta Protestants do, and I assume he is - if he's really a Christian at all - a Protestant. This looks like it was done in five minutes. The original probably sold to some reetard for ten grand and the numberless lithos pro'bly went for 250 and up. Depending on size. On any level this is
a sketch. While it seems to Kinkade that the most popular site in Santa Barbara is the Mission, anyone who lives there knows it is State Street and the pier. The real mission actually is imposing because it is on high ground with absolutely nothing impeding the view to the sea, and has nothing built near it to dwarf it, and the broad flat adobe of the large facade reflects a lot of light. Something the "Painter Of Light" has completely and inexplicably not concerned himself with this time. In fact, this is drab even by Kinkde's listless standards. He has turned a genuinely dramatic building and setting into a dead, dusty, empty seemingly abandoned ruin. Kinkade never fails to fail. Good job, son, there is probably no painting in your whole inventory that showcases your worthless abilities more than this one. If the mission "stands proud, gleeming in the golden California sun" there is absolutely no evidence of that in this painting. So why would you mention it? Why not talk about the weather in Borneo or a fish sandwich you had last Thursday? That would be JUST AS IRRELEVANT TO THIS PAINTING as "the missions stands proud in the golden California sun. And I watched Burn Notice Saturday." Holy Jesus Fucking Christ Almighty. What the fucking fuck.

Cottage By The Sea In Monochrome Blue

"Though this cottage doesn't exist anywhere but in my painting, I think for many of us it represents an ideal seaside getaway. When the tide is out, you could wander amongst the rocks searching for the perfect seashell for your collection, while the lonely call of seagulls echoes overhead. Of course, I had to paint the scene at sunset. After all, what would a seaside cottage be without a beautiful sunset to watch?

— Thomas Kinkade"

In even the Thomas Kinkade universe of Art Appreciation this is a piece of shit. He says this cottage only exists in his painting. It barely exists even there. It is a superficial slopwash of crap. He can only be talking to a two year old mentality in saying that a very amateurish painting can represent anything to anyone except a very bad painting. He talks about the tide being out in this pasteboard mess as though some human being is staring at it and drooling with exctement and can't wait to climb up onto the gallery wall and leap inside the frame and run slappity slap to the water yelling "yippee!!!" It's a goddamn painting, "Thom," and not a very good one. Nobody wants to wander among the goddamn imaginary rocks badly depicted in this weirdly illuminated sunset grotesquerie. And "Thom"?.....seagulls do not screech lonely calls. Seagulls screech very abrasive calls, calls filled with self-confidence and self assurance. Seagulls are extremely gregarious and have real actual friends and are probably better and more sincere company than you. They are never lonely. They always have billions of buddies around them. HAHA He "had" to paint the scene at sunset. "Thom," it's a good thing you said what's going on here because based on the lack of shadows or clue to any light SOURCE one would have to assume that it was the interior of a photo shoot with lights on all around. Oh, and "Thom"?....exactly where is this beautiful sunset you're talking about. There sure ain't one in THIS picture. Is there another sun rising behind the viewer? It LOOKS like there is, there's so much godamn fill-light. At the first storm with the moon and one of those suns in alignment that human doghouse is gonna be history.

The Lit Path That Leads To Satan

"Lights are always a favorite subject of mine, especially when they seem to beckon me towards a cozy setting. The lights along this walkway not only beckon, they light the way, which is especially needful for steps that, in typical English fashion, seem as irregular as the ground they traverse.

— Thomas Kinkade"

The lit path in the title of this botch is not even a path. It's a walkway. One that SEEMS higher than the ground it's on, as though there is a space under each block or slab or whatever those things are. It appears to ascend to a place higher than the bottom of the door. It also seems half again as wide as the door. The front cottage seems to bend backwards away from the viewer, like the blue roof is a hat that is falling off sideways. The omnipresent lampost seems to have a bow in it. The front chimney seems to lean to the right. Continued viewing of "the path" that is not a path makes it levitate higher and higher off the earth. It's almost actually magical, which Thomas Kinkade would be delighted to hear me saying, but, "Thom"?....it's magical in a sort of erroneous way: it's your shitty training and your fucked-up color sense and major faults in technique that creates this druggie fucked up apparition. I like when he says "Lights are always a favorite subject of mine..." Is he a master of understatement or what? LIGHTS ARE A FUCKING OBSESSION MONOMANIA AND NOT VERY WELL-RENDERED GLARING FAULT OF YOURS, REMBRANDT!!

Moonlight Cottage In Giger Forest

The yellow, searing thermonuclear circle arising up over the top of the Kinkade Kottage is supposed to be the moon. You really have to wonder sometimes if Kinkade is intentionally trying to see just how far he can prod these old fucks who buy his shit, just to see how far he can prod these wizened boneheads into Believing Anything. I mean if the guy illustrating the retarded edition of Peter Rabbit submitted this as one of the illustrations for Peter Rabbit's house at night he would be fired. Then sent to Iran for execution. The moon is admittedly a bit hard hard to see. It is at the base of the phlegm-colored bright yellow cloud formation near Chimney Number Two. The one with the two smoke stacks.

"In Moonlight Cottage, I celebrate the enchanting moment when the moon begins to appear above a sheltered cottage set within a forest. Beholding this scene as the sounds of the forest envelope you and the moist fragrance of evening fills your lungs would be a transcendent moment. I cannot imagine a more peaceful experience.

— Thomas Kinkade"

Do you see a "forest" here? Do you see the "moon" and not an " ascending nuclear fireball" here? Do you hear sounds of the forest enveloping you here? Are you smelling moist fragrances with your lungs? Are you having a "transcendent moment" looking at this? Is it good for you that Thomas Kinkade cannot imagine a more peaceful experience? Why would anyone in their right mind give a shit what "Thom" Kinkade can or cannot imagine? He cannot imagine a more peaceful experience. I believe that. His imagination is clearly limited. At least based on his portfolio. He does not seem to be able to get his imagination past the nursery school stage. I mean, I critique the guy but it could be that he has a developmental disorder. It could be he can barely function in society and that God really has given this spazzed-up twecko tweaked-over drooling reetard - who for all I know might sound like a
moaning water pipe when he talks - a gift for accurate, proportional childish renditions of bunny scenes. I mean I NEVER HAVE seen a video of the fellow in action. It could be he is a poster boy for Steven Hawking disease, I don't know. But I am assuming he is a normal-appearing, normal-sounding sort of fellow who if he entered Chilis while you were waiting for a table, he would appear ordinary. Except for the packed-on transfat from which his penguin arms and legs emerge, of course. So maybe he really CAN'T imagine a more peaceful experience than the one thus described here with second-grade vocabulary and compositional skills. If Kinkade has Downs Syndrome I most sincerely and humbly do apologize to the guy. Really: I would be WAY outa line under that circumstance. Can we get back to this horrible picture? I can only assume, because I am MORE than generous in my assumptions regarding Kinkade paintings, that the standing water in the left foreground is the remainder from an imaginary storm that passed by and is not the transcendent cottage's septic tank gurgling through the rock-hard ruts in the dirt. And can we talk about that fucking lamp over there in the middle of the weeds that is a fixture in every Kinkade painting of a cottage because he "cannot imagine" a cottage painting without one? I mean, there ain't even a PATH near THAT one. It's just fuckin' THERE. And where are the powerlines for these things? Or for ANY of the billion cottages in the billions of cottage pictures? Is the "light" that he is a "painter of" coming from fuel lamps? No wonder there's so many fucking chimneys in all these houses. It must be like a forest fire in there. And how is it these little primitive oil lamps shine so fucking BRIGHT? Are we looking at them through time-lapse paint?

The Good Shepherd's Cottage In The Bad Forester's Woods

Let's just jump right to the maestro's words first thing, shall we?

"The Good Shepherd's Cottage is an allegory in paint, an image of the Lord returning to call His faithful. His house is an utterly comfortable and secure cottage, radiant with light. The air is luminous with sunset; the sound of His voice thrilling as He calls His sheep into a verdant meadow.

- Thomas Kinkade"

How the fuck does Kinkade hear the sound of a painted man's voice?? What the fuck is the fucking DEAL with this guy???? Actually I know what the fucking deal is with this guy. He is not selling paintings. He is selling Christianity - or some weird version of it - to people who already have his weird version of Christianity. He is selling cult booster-shots. Christians are convinced they are "nicer" than everyone else, even though in God's eyes all of humanity is fucked up to the max and worthy of destruction. If Jesus is calling the sheep into a verdant meadow he is failing at it, they seem to be making a beeline for the house. Since this is an ALLEGORY IN PAINT the sheep are also us, so we would not be expected to go into the verdant meadow at night, we would go there during the day to have a picnic and go into the "utterly comfortable and secure cottage" at night. So this is more properly not just an allegory but a jumbled allegory. Exactitude is not a trait of Thomas Kinkade in his descriptions of his own paintings, everything is more or less all over the place and peppered with tried and true adjectives. Verdant meadows. Riots of color. Babbling brooks. And I do not personally feel that he is even all that properly aquainted with the nature of Christianity. I always sense that he is walking into the banquet room and sitting at the head of the table unasked.
Even using exhausted cliche'd expressions he falls short of hauling his dreary realities of paint out of their torpor. You cannot fault Mr. Kinkade for bravery or nerve or whatever you want to call it, however, he is quite as prepared and anxious to show you how bad a WRITER he is as he is prepared and anxious to show you how bad a PAINTER he is. So he is consistent. Kinkade, for all his piety and expertise in the Gospels, does not have a clear picture of the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd goes CHASING AFTER the sheep to CARRY THEM BACK ON HIS SHOULDERS. He doesn't stand in the insufferable heat of a burning thatch-roofed cottage in fairyland and beckon them with wizardry and runic utterances and outstreched magnetic arms to come inside and relax. But enough about Jesus, let's get back to the real god here, Thomas Kinkade: that same exact sky appears in damn near every single one of his cottage paintings that HAVE a sky. It's always THAT one. The atmosphere never changes on the Kinkade Horizon. It always results in orange clouds in a yellow sky at sunset. In this painting even Jesus with His super powers cannot seem to dissipate by decree the ominous silver cloud of visible ptomaine that inches closer, ever closer, to THE ALLEGORY IN PAINT. The "utterly comfortable and secure" cottage, does not appear utterly comfortable and secure upon actual close inspection. MOST of Kinkade's utterances seem to undergo noticeable alteration upon actual close inspection. The roof of a portion of the cottage seems to have a clearly defined swayback appearance and does not look all that secure, and the comfort level of a tiny interior glowing with a radiating heat of 2,000 degrees from a mysterious power source that appears to come from the earth's molten core can NOT be comfortable to anyone but Hephaestus, the blacksmith in Zeus's stables; as soon as those sheep enter the house they are going to be vaporized into lanolin mist. In the ALLEGORY IN PAINT the Lord has "returned," most likely to earth, and yet He is in His "house" - most likely in heaven. It's all just a blithering mess. Just say anything at all, "Thom," the pictures will still sell. And, whatdafuck, so far that's been the case.

Stillwater Cottage, Badwater Vibe

In this picture we are once again safe and secure in familiar Thomas Kinkade Nightmare Village Hell. As you may remember, Friendship Cottage, the previous entry and just below this one, entered strange and unfamiliar territory for a Thomas Kinkade painting: It did not immediately snap your aesthetic-sensors into a seizure of vibrating electroshock paralysis that caused horrific, uncontrollable screams and shrieks to fly from your voltage-besparked vocal cords. But here, with Stillwater Cottage, we are once again on old, reliable, familiar Thomas Kinkade loam. Once again we feel that acrid constriction of the spirit and we gaze into the abysmal dark, uniformly bland, contrast-free bizarro cartoon world of invisible beheaded bunnies and decompression-chamber dogs long-since hauled away. We once again stand in front of a world of sad, clinically-depressed ghosts staring back at us via the spirit-wires of haunted communication and we feel their pain and their sadness and their fear at the scarily distorted world around them. Bad as both paintings are, this one has NONE of the positice aspects that somehow crept-in and almost overtook the one below it. In this one that claustrophobic glut of revoltingly colored STUFF surrounds everything in sight. Glut overpowers more glut, like looking into the bweilderingly occupied interior of an obsessively-gathering, ritualistically-collecting, human packrat's house. Except Kinkade collects plants, ducks, streams, buildings, off-putting colors, dismal non-existant shadings and non existant variegations of impossibilities of the color spectrumin known life forms and compresses them all together into a two dimensional wall of STUFF that by sheer accumulation of supposed NICENESS is somehow going to make us yearn for it. Let's look at the molten mercury stream for a moment, a standard artifact in all Thomas Kinkade maelstroms of inanimate entities. In THIS cottage picture it drips languidly in lazy, meandering slumber down a 90 degree cliffside in complete obliviousness to gravity and six other laws of Nature, which if this was a properly depicted stream in that location would be a wall of decending mudslick and brown water sheets. It would NOT be in a dainty little streambed
of restraint and delightfulness. Kinkade's idiot Christian customers, blinded by the light of Jesus that makes you walk into walls, and mesmerized by the painter's proclamations of his personal sanctity, are somehow as a result not bothered by such
fuckass bits of defiances of the laws of nature. For this is a fantasy cottage. This is what his emaciated, withered, soon-to-see-Jesus-and-hopefully-not-get-sent-to-hell customers think that heaven is like: a lifeless, paint-pasted shoe-sucking sodden vertical landscape of dementedly illuminated two-dimensional ooze. Trees from a thousand different galaxies line the paths and surround the house and rise up into the skies in the distance and create an environment unlike anything either on earth OR in fairyland. It is just a morass of trees of all shapes, sizes, colors, varieties, some of the probably even mammalian and reptilian, we just cant see the tails, but they are probably there. Not that meteorology counts for shit in a Kinkade forest but that configuration of warm clouds in that fairness of sky and in this balminess of scene, with, you know, the geese and the
suffocating bursts of growth in the tropical density of jungle growth in the palpably humid air would NEVER generate a freezing wall of fog such as is visibly advancing from some invisible sub-zero Arctic ice-flow onto this toxically barometric pressure cooker. I mean, NOTHING makes a lick of fucking sense here, even for a fairy picture. Only in the mind of Thomas Kinkade is the alls-well bell sounding in this emergency room of madness.

Friendship Cottage Where Friendships End. In Murder

This is a rare anomaly in the Kinkade portfolio, a painting that almost makes you want to look at it. I think it is the predominance of green within its lifeless, spiritless borders that makes you forget for a moment the previous horrors you were subjected to as you perused the artistically desolate Kinkade ouvre. The ominous silver fog of mystery chemicals is noticeably gone in this picture. That alone would remove 50% of the disturbing menace that engulfs all of his nursery-school wall paintings. There is almost a sliver of breeze whacking against the inescapable strip of smoke coming from the inescapable smoking chimney. It could be this and this alone, this spark of life SOMEWHERE that so drastically alters the mood of the thing from a ghastly scene of post apocalyptic death to one of actual aliveness. It takes so very little to so radically alter a Thomas Kinkade mausoleum tableau into a pleasant party scene. You would think he would put down the bacon sandwich and attempt it more often. This painting is so devoid of the deadly forboding, or sense of doomstruck, neutron bomb aftermath that his paintings all have, that I am tempted to wonder if maybe he didn't do this one at all. Even the cottage is different. It seems to have some aspects of the Third Dimension to it as it aims itself diagonally across the canvas, like a small ship steaming through the glen. And we see the cottage as if from a lower angle than the head-on tank-attack broadside wall-of-treacle that we have gotten so used to. There is almost an atom of drama in its configurational mode. It is almost non sepulcheral in its aspect. The walls seem to bulge from the festive nature of itself, though it is actually most likely the escalating PSI's from the about-to-explode pressure-cooker inferno engaged in a devouring feeding-frenzy of the couches and drapes of the interior of the still-contained conflagration occuring inside. Still, it is almost fun. It is almost pleasant. This HAS to be a painting by someone else. Even the thick monochrome colormass of green coming at you from all directions is actually pleasant. Sure, it has the many Kinkade monstrosities present to offer some counter argument to the suggestion he didn't do it: the idiotic little streetlight or porchlight
stuck in the middle of nothing for no reason: all the lights are on even though it is broad daylight. There are the usual Insane Klown Posse colors on the undergrowth. The lime-green, lifelessly dense hoargrass growing up from the sides of the cement-hard, desicated earthen concrete of the drought-encrusted path that apparently nothing has trod for years. And of course the stream is filled with molten chrome. Sure: many of the traditional Kinkade nightmares are all there. But some have been removed and have been replaced with something very akin to...I almost can't believe I am saying this: nonregurgative viewability. Perhaps a pang of conscience stabbed briefly at his soul during the making of it and he gave-in to its strange and alien allure. I have never seen a second instance of a painting like this from him so I guess the uncharacteristic discomfort passed as quickly as it arrived.

Gingerbread Cottage For Gingerbread Brains

The binary star-system theory is in full swing here in this sappy application of oil-based coagulant Kinkade calls his "ministry." The sun is pretty clearly most likely the glowy area behind the alleged gingerbread construction that looks like the usual stone substance from the Kinkade paint quarries. And yet the whole front yard is in perfect - and I don't mean "perfect," - what I mean is you can see it - visibility. Nothing is perfect in a Kingade painting except in his own analysis of it. The front of this house should be completely black. Except of course from the illumination provided by the ten thousand watts of electricity that bleeds out of the windows like generator-driven Tesla coils. But this would take some level of artistic aptitude to accomplish. Any high school student who doodles in his notebook rather than listens to the teacher could do it. A grafitti artist who paints the sides of railroad cars on the sneak could do it. But then we wouldn't be able to see the red bushes and the blue hedges and the maroon shrubs and the bright orange tree in the back yard. The green tree in the FRONT yard is of course not as close to the sun as the tree in the bak yard so it displays none of the high intensity emanations as the tree in the back which is 50 feet closer to the sun which is 90 million miles away. The large yellow bush on the right with the pollen-drenched weed blooms is glaring at us like a spray-painted truck fender. If this mess was handed-in as a completed assignment at any art school Kinkade would be thrown out on his ear. It is plain and simple a revolting mess. And you do not have to be someone who hates thomas Kinkade for his profound piety to fail him on this painting assignment. Although he might claim that that is the motivation. It is often the "Christian" version of the race card. Christians feel picked on because they have brains of soup, and so they assume it is because they are soldiers for Christ. No: it is because they have brains of soup. The shock of the born-again experience must liquify the interiors of their skulls. They lose all reason. They see things that aren't there and cannot see what is there. They wonder why people are reluctant to convert. They wonder why even Wiccans are able to back them into a corner in a debate. It's because you think paintings like this are metaphysically enlightening paths to God Almighty. Dudes!....It's just a really messed-up painting! With a phenomenal price tag! In fairness, I cannot fault Kinkade for charging what he does. Nobody has to pay it. He doesn't out a gun to anyone's head, he likely can't operate one. And even if he could he still wouldn't because he probably couldn't operate one that well. I mean, look at how he paints. But enough from me, what do I know. Let's see what the maestro has to say about this masterpiece.

"Gingerbread Cottage is based on a real 19th Century house I discovered in Southern England. The whimsical structure with its brick, stone, wood filigree, shingle siding, awnings, dormers, and spires, revels in a spirit of romantic excess. Here is the fairy tale charm of Hansel and Gretel's Gingerbread Cottage brought to life.

The front garden is a riot of rainbow colors with lavish flowers dancing in the evening breeze. I've provided a whimsical bench from which you may enjoy the advance of evening at Gingerbread Cottage.

-Thomas kinkade"

Get a load of this guy. He's provided a whimsical bench. He just drew one in. He didn't provide anything. You can't really sit there. You don't buy a fucking painting and then sit on a bench in the front and look in the other direction. Wait! That IS what you would do with a Kinkade painting. Could be he's a little more on the ball than I have given him credit for. A "riot" of colors. You sure don't read that anywhere very often. However in this case it is true. It's more than a riot, it's a psychedelic overload.
And not a groovy one. It's a grotesquerie of colors. Where the fuck is this evening breeze he's talkin' about. Hey dude, if there's a breeze in a picture it has to be actually depicted somehow, you don't just proclaim it. I don't know if he is actually familiar with Hansel and Gretel but the gingerbread house was to be their death container. The house doesn't revel in the spirit of romantic excess it revels in artistic incompetence. Just because you pronounce it doesn't make it so. It only does with God. And I don't hear much comin' from His direction at the moment to me about this. But I hear a hell of a lot comin' from you. None of whichj I can verify with my own two eyes. Maybe I need to look at this with the eyes of faith. Hey, then why put anything on the canvas at all, dude? Cy Twombly gets away with it, and he's big stuff in the art world. You oughta try it. Start first by getting rid of the blue greenery.

Cobblestone Bridge

This is called Cobblestone Bridge. It could be called Jimmy Horowotz, it wouldn't affect one's response to the "painting." The bridge leads to a structure that has 7 funnels of smoke coming out of 5 chimneys, and which smoke is rising to the cartoon skies above. What the fuck is going on in there, Nazi's burning Jews? It can't be that fucking cold in there, it looks pretty calm on the outside, there's a fucking swan relaxing dead beneath the surface in the sewer, so what's with the fucking infernos? The building next to it has the fires on too. There's another house on the left that has the coalfires blazing. Is everyone inside all the houses insane? Are the buildings actually on fire and the flames just haven't come through the windows yet? Let's see what our artist has to say about this inspiring wonderland of incineration:

"Recently Nanette and I explored a new corner of the British Isles: the Hampshire region in southwest England. As we walked its quaint paths, I felt a longing for a time when rambling was a preferred mode of transportation. Cobblestone Bridge is bathed in the light of a golden nostalgic sunset, the glow of oil lamps, firelight in the thatch-roofed cottages, and the yearnings in my heart. The stately old bridge is constructed with fieldstones and the thatched roofs are built up from bundles of reeds. In the world of Cobblestone Bridge, man and nature live in God's perfect balance. While we visited, Nanette and I shared in that harmony.

— Thomas Kinkade"


Cobblestone Bridge is bathed in the light of the yearnings in Thomas Kinkade's heart. Good God Awmighty. If this ain't poetry and inspiration in a bottle I don't know what is. I thought I liked the painting before, but now, reading this, I am squirting cum all over the room from my now astoundingly-huge-with-delight dick. I am driven to wonder, amid all this poesy, what would actually constitute the yearnings in Thomas Kinkdade's heart? After all, he is never too specific about his swooning, Life's Super-OK utterances, you know. They are generally pretty fucking vague and nebulous and nougat-like in their ease of digestion. They are not really measuring rods of exactitude. They are not exactly words that would push anyones' buttons. He does not use a highly-charged communicational tone. Things are generally pretty laid back and relaxed, in a kind of "Jesus is right here with us thanks to me, don't you know" sort of way, you see. Returning to the picture if I may?....this truly is a wonderland alright; the stream in the backround portion appears to be terraced. As though it is a cobblestone stream. That IS nice. A stone-terraced stream. It's like Disneyland for parchment-brained octogenarians with Alzheimers who see this sight new, every second, with no ability to accrue any kind of judgement upon it. So let's install a terraced stream!! Who gives a shit!! Only geezers will ever see it: and geezers are, as I believe I said before, totally fucked up, so, as I believe I said before, who gives a shit. For this is the Disneyland of Little Painted Pik-tee-yew-werzz. A world of eye-pablum for idiots. He says the scene is bathed in the light of sunset. This is clearly something only Thomas Kinkade can see, for one reason or another. Nothing in this picture is bathed in any kind of light other than the all-present pallor of uniformity. It is like the viewer has just operated a gigantic flash attachment that has illuminated all surfaces equally. Paintings of things in the sunset do not get any worse than this. What gets me is that he actually ruminates on this artistic squalor and rambles on about things nobody else can see, like someone talking about a giant rabbit next to them. There is one good thing to be said about the Thomas Kinkade "art" phenomenon: it should efficiently destroy the litho, glicee, paint-spray painting-duplication business once and for all. So all you painters with some actual talent who live off your reproductions?....when enough of this guy's pissed-off customers accrue enough knowledge from their own folly and get halfway educated about art and as a result your own business falls victim in the backlash, you'll have this guy to thank. He's like a one-man mortgage-loan
house of cards Or in this case, house of lithos, glicees, computer-inked dupes, and inherently worthless originals.

Thomas Kinkade In His Own Fawning Words

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