Oh My Goodness…how has another week gone by already? This time of year always seems to go so fast! It’s snowy here in New Jersey today, so things look pretty, but it’s cold. When I sit at my desk to work, the desk is cold, so it sucks all the heat out of my arms where they touch the desk! Terrible. I am not a fan of winter.
I’m looking forward to getting down there to see you in just two weeks!
This week’s Christmas artist is Thomas Kinkade. He is probably one of the most reproduced artists in the world, because he was a genius at mass marketing of art. At one point I remember hearing someone say that one out of every 20 homes in America had something in it with a Thomas Kinkade print on it. When I worked for Avon products, we had a bunch of knick-knacks with his stuff on them. I actually hate that. My favorite thing about paintings is the texture of the paint – being able to see the brush strokes, and feel the movement of the artists hand….so when you take a lovely, big painting, and turn it into a tiny print on a coffee cup, it just seems kind of yucky to me. However, doing that allowed Thomas Kinkade to make a lot of money, and to share his art with a huge number of people who otherwise would never have been able to afford an original painting for their homes, so I give him props for that.
He was called the “painter of light”, but the funny thing is that he chose that name for himself, and he kind of stole it from J.M.W. Turner (I’ll tell you about him some other time). A lot of art critics didn’t like his work, saying it was meaningless. But for a whole lot of people, his work showed a lovely and kind of idealistic world that they’d want to be part of if they could, so I think that has a meaning all by itself. And I do think his paintings are really beautiful….but….
One critic said that his work had “such insistent coziness as to seem actually sinister, suggestive of a trap designed to attract Hansel and Gretel.” And when I read that, I realized that’s a perfect description of how I see his work. It’s beautiful and kind of perfect, and the lights always seem to glow, but there’s just a little bit of an undercurrent to all that perfectness that I don’t like at all…but that’s exactly what makes his work interesting to me!
Anyway, here are two of his Christmas paintings, and a springtime cottage, so you can see for yourself. Can’t you just see a Grinch hiding behind that snowman, waiting for carolers to walk up so he can steal their figgy pudding, the monster that’s about to rise up out of that perfect lake, or a witch lurking inside that last cottage, ready to eat Hansel and Gretel when they come through the door? So, not very Christmas-sey of me, but they are beautiful paintings no matter what you see in them!
Know that I love you and think that you’re awesome.
Hugs and kisses,
Auntie Paula
xoxoxoxoxo
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