Thomas Kinkade

Thomas Kinkade
In add some life stories.
These gray dark clouds,
Blue paint mask out - so it's best
Thomas Kinkade (January 19, 1958 – April 6, 2012)[2][3] was an American painter of popular realistic, bucolic, and idyllic subjects.[3] He is notable for the mass marketing of his work as printed reproductions and other licensed products via The Thomas Kinkade Company. He characterized himself as "Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light," a phrase he protected through trademark but one originally attributed to the English master J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851).[4] He was claimed to be "America's most-collected living artist" before his death[5] with an estimated 1 in every 20 American homes owning a copy of one of his paintings
Kinkade grew up in the town of Placerville, California, graduated from El Dorado High School in 1976, and attended the University of California, Berkeley and the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.[1] He married Nanette Wiley in 1982 and the couple have four daughters: Merritt (b. 1988), Chandler (b. 1991), Winsor (b. 1995) and Everett (b. 1997), all named for famous artists.[1] He and his wife had previously separated for over a year before his death in 2012.[7]
Some of the people who mentored and taught him long before college were Charles Bell and Glenn Wessels.[1] Wessels encouraged Kinkade to go to the University of California at Berkeley. Kinkade's relationship with Wessels is the subject of a semi-autobiographical film released in 2008, The Christmas Cottage. After two years of general education at Berkeley, Kinkade transferred to the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.
In 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 The Artist's Guide to Sketching,[1] which was one of Guptill Publications' best-sellers that year. The success of the book landed him and Gurney at Ralph Bakshi Studios creating background art for the 1983 animated feature film Fire and Ice.[1] While working on the film, Kinkade began to explore the depiction of light and of imagined worlds. After the film, Kinkade earned his living as a painter, selling his originals in galleries throughout California.
From Wikipedia