Thomas Kinkade DUI, Bankruptcy, Fraud – The ‘Painter of Light’ is apparently in a dark period. He has recently had to file for bankruptcy to escape retribution in relation to fraud charges in which the world-renowned painter was successfully charged with bilking galleries out of millions.
On June 2, 2010, one of Thomas Kinkade’s company,Pacific Metro LLC, filed for bankruptcy protection had to file for bankruptcy protection after art gallery owners successfully pressed fraud charges against the company. They, along with hundreds of other creditors, were said to be owed millions by the famous painter’s art empire. Kinkade is said to beone of the world’s wealthiest artist. He is certainly one of the most collectible artists in the world. He is known for homey landscapes and Christian motifs. Now, it seems, he will be known for a quick succession of legal problems.
Kinkade, 52-years-old is a native of Placerville, California. He was pulled over and arrested on DUI charges on Friday night, June 11, 2010, outside of Carmel, California, where he owns a home. This on the heels of his company’s legal troubles.
A Monterey County sheriff’s deputy stopped Kinkade for a minor traffic violation. According to the California Highway Patrol spokesperson, after an initial conversation about the violation, the deputy gave Kinkade a sobriety test, which he failed.
Kinkade stopped selling original paintings in 1997, wanting to keep his original collection together. Since 1997, Kinkade has sold lithographic reproductions of his work on canvas in an array of prices ranging from $300 to $15,000. Kinkade employs a team of painters that place highlights on each print, adding an individual touch and a texture more similar to oil on canvas paintings. Kinkade creates around 12 paintings a year as of 2010.
Warning
The mainstream art world does not hold Kinkade in high esteem. Contemporary dealers in the United States and worldwide consider Kinkade's work overly commercialized, appealing to low cultural values and poorly made. This is an opinion exemplified by Joan Didion, who wrote: "A Kinkade painting was typically rendered in slightly surreal pastels. It typically featured a cottage or a house of such insistent coziness as to seem actually sinister, suggestive of a trap designed to attract Hansel and Gretel. Every window was lit, to lurid effect, as if the interior of the structure might be on fire." Accordingly, individuals interested in selling or valuing their Kinkade prints should stay within the Kinkade market.
The Oil & Water Dont’ Mix poster by British designer Anthony Burill is printed with oil collected from the soiled beaches of the Gulf of Mexico. The limited edition posters ( 200 prints ) are being sold to support CRCL or The Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, a non-profit organization dedicated to restoring the Gulf of Mexico’s coastal wetlands.
That's right, its Clint Eastwood's immortal line, "...You've have to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya punk?" So why Dirty Harry. Because it's time again to GET DIRTY, and GET PUNKED for this years:
PUNK ROCK T-SHIRT PRINTING MOSH!
Thursday, December 9th starting at 6:30 pm. Bring T-shirts, fabrics and print paper to print on for both your own design and those of other artists. Costumes encouraged! Please bring a potluck item, I"ll order us some pizza's.
Lately I have worked almost exclusively with white paper in different objects, paper cuts, installations and performances. A large part of my work is made from A4 sheets of paper. It is probably the most common and consumed media used for carrying information today. This is why we rarely notice the actual materiality of the A4 paper. By taking away all the information and starting from scratch using the blank white A4 paper sheet for my creations, I feel I have found a material that we are all able to relate to, and at the same time the A4 paper sheet is neutral and open to fill with different meaning. The thin white paper gives the paper sculptures a frailty that underlines the tragic and romantic theme of my works.
The paper cut sculptures explore the probable and magical transformation of the flat sheet of paper into figures that expand into the space surrounding them. The negative and absent 2 dimensional space left by the cut, points out the contrast to the 3 dimensional reality it creates, even though the figures still stick to their origin without the possibility of escaping. In that sense there is also an aspect of something tragic in many of the cuts.
See more interesting cut paper sculptural work by clicking here.
Chipita Park's, Jean Gumpper has said her own artistic work is an effort to "let the landscape act as a visual metaphor for emotions and experiences." Ms. Gumpper's exquisite woodcut prints create an evocative, semi-abstract view of woodland foliage and waterside plant life with close-up images with reflective light and still waters. Some of her prints, in their spatial relationships and attention to nature, honor Asian painting and woodcuts. Click here for more.