'Painter of Light' Thomas Kinkade dies

SAN FRANCISCO -- Artist Thomas Kinkade once said that he had something in common with Walt Disney and Norman Rockwell: He wanted to make people happy.

And he won success with brushwork paintings that focused on idyllic landscapes, cottages and churches -- highly popular works that became big sellers for dealers across the United States.

The self-described "Painter of Light," who died Friday at 54, produced sentimental scenes of country gardens and pastoral landscapes in dewy morning light that were beloved by many and made him a millionaire, but criticized by the art establishment.

Kinkade died at his home in Los Gatos, Calif., of what appeared to be natural causes, said family spokesman David Satterfield.

He claimed to be the nation's most collected living artist, and his paintings and spinoff products were said to fetch some $100 million a year in sales, and to be in 10 million homes in the United States.

Those light-infused renderings are often prominently displayed in buildings, malls and on products -- generally depicting tranquil scenes with lush landscaping and streams running nearby. Many contain images from Bible passages.

"I'm a warrior for light," Kinkade, a devout Christian, told the San Jose Mercury News in 2002, a reference to the medieval practice of using light to symbolize the divine. "With whatever talent and resources I have, I'm trying to bring light to penetrate the darkness many people feel."

Before Kinkade's Media Arts Group went private in the middle of the past decade, the company took in $32 million per quarter from 4,500 dealers across the country, according to the Mercury News. The cost of his paintings range from hundreds of dollars to more than $10,000.

His artistic philosophy was not to express himself through his paintings like many artists, but rather to give the masses what they wanted: warm, positive images, Ken Raasch, who co-founded Kinkade's company with him, told the Mercury News.

"I'd see a tree as being green, and he would see it as 47 different shades of green," Raasch said. "He just saw the world in a much more detailed way than anyone I've ever seen."

Kinkade once said, "I share something in common with Norman Rockwell and, for that matter, with Walt Disney, in that I really like to make people happy."

He was born and raised in the Placerville, Calif. He studied at the University of California, Berkeley, and at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif.

He said art was a major outlet growing up. "I was always the kid who could draw," he said. "I had this talent, and it was the one thing that gave me some kind of dignity in the midst of my personal environment."