CHAPTER 6 
Nobody ever lost a dollar by underestimating the taste of the American public.
—P. T. BARNUM
By 2002, the 500,000-square-foot facility at Morgan Hill was pumping out five hundred paintings a day. The perfected assembly line pushed the canvas transfers through the high-tech facility, humming like a well-oiled machine, creating the clones at an average of one per minute. Even though replicated nearly three thousand times, these copies would go on to sell for between $1200 and $10,000 apiece, which could mean $500,000 per day. In part, the justification for the value of these products lay in the hand highlighting added at the end. With the touch of the human hand in the machine-printed canvas, every copy became an original again; a concept never before explored in the history of art. For some editions, in order to increase the value, Thom sometimes drew an additional original sketch on the back of the painting, and also sometimes added highlights himself, all of which brought added value by the touch of his hand. And for those collectors, the ordinary people for whom $2,000 and up was a lot of money, Media Arts had a helpful financing program available.
The phrase Painter of Light was trademarked, and the small TM symbol was added to every mention of Thom’s name in print. The phrase Sharing the Light also received a trademark. At the height of Thom’s success, it had become obvious that his art was more than art—it was an idea. And the idea in the art was at its most powerful when you combined the image with words. That way, the image didn’t just have to imply the idea; it could state it overtly. Thom’s paintings always included a small scriptural reference as part of his signature line. Much to the delight of his collectors, Thom also added in Nanette’s initial, N, cleverly hidden throughout various aspects of his paintings. It soon became obvious to everyone at the company that when you took an image of Thom’s and put it on the page of a book and added a quote beneath, the image and words worked powerfully together to capture what he was saying and created a new product, a new brand. The images became more than images; they were moments of inspiration capturing an existential state. The words completed who he was as an artist, a writer, and a prophet.
Quotes taken from the scriptures, and from important figures in history and religion, were added to our prints as well as to our licensed products. Soon some of Thom’s art calendars also contained biblical quotations. Instead of just reproducing a bucolic summery image of a lush garden enveloping a cozy cottage, we would include a quote from his New York Times bestseller Lightposts for Living, such as “Pursue your passion—or put passion into your pursuit” or “My life shines with God’s radiant blessings when my heart is the color of joy.” Words were added to many of Thom’s core art products as well, and the message component became a big part of the business and greatly expanded the buyer base. Not everyone could afford a canvas transfer painting, but they could buy small, beautifully framed gift prints with Thom’s quotes and sayings added. These could be sold for $60, or $99, or $120, based on size. With Thom’s wisdom added, they nearly became their own market.
It was the task of my licensing division to approve the products our licensees planned to produce. A licensor like Hallmark would plan a new run of Christmas cards with one of Thom’s images, and send us a mock-up with the image and a suggested quote included in the card. My team would analyze the image and approve it, based on our guidelines and Thom’s wishes.
Mostly we were looking for quotes that were “inspirational,” a marketing concept similar to motivational material; quotes had to entail messages that motivated and inspired the reader in a positive way. We were also looking for messages that contained the notion of light. Thom often brought everything back to the idea of light, as a core concept to his own brand as the Painter of Light. An image of a sunrise over a wintry cottage in the mountains became doubly powerful with a scriptural quotation beneath it, such as this one from the Book of Ecclesiastes: “Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun” (King James Bible).
Thom’s images combined with inspirational messages were so powerful that customers just kept buying and fans kept coming for more. The Thomas Kinkade Collectors Society offered guided tours in Placerville, for which collectors traveled from far and wide to see his childhood home, his first studio, and the church where he and Nanette were married. They toured the houses he painted and walked the Main Street he immortalized.
The signature galleries provided inside access to the magical kingdom of Thomas Kinkade, and many collectors became obsessed. They could go to their local mall and enter the world of Thomas Kinkade like a ride at Disneyland. Some couples, prosperous hard-working people who had saved their money, some who prospered by owning their own businesses, or those who were willing to go into debt, spent up to $150,000 collecting hundreds of his canvas transfer paintings, and ultimately had to rotate them on a weekly basis to see them all. Collectors described experiencing withdrawal after more than a couple of weeks of staying away from the galleries. Another collector owned forty-four paintings and had them all hanging on his walls, with nine in his breakfast nook alone. This humble man from a small town in Texas spent $80,000, probably his life savings, on his canvas transfer collection. When asked which was his favorite Thomas Kinkade painting, he replied, “The one I don’t have yet.”
Media Arts advertised Thomas Kinkade as the most collected artist ever. This was calculated by the number of times an image was reproduced and sold in its various editions, which numbered in the thousands for every image. No artist painting an original, and printing a limited edition of a hundred prints, could ever come close to the number of times a Kinkade painting was reproduced and published. In sales meetings and interviews, the high edition numbers were turned into a positive talking point: “Thomas Kinkade has sold more art than Monet, Picasso, Pissarro, and Manet.” If someone inevitably asked, “All of them?” the answer would be, “Combined.” In fact, it was true. No other artist came close to edition sizes as large as Thom’s, or reproducing paintings and prints in the volume that he did.
Thom became such a star that he was a regular fixture at the White House. He was invited several times, not only as a personal guest of Bill and Hillary Clinton, but later of George W. Bush. For the Clintons, Thom was chosen to present a painting of the National Christmas Tree for the 2000 Christmas Pageant of Peace, which was also used on the cover of the pageant’s program.
I had seen Thom in his studio back then, weeks before his departure, and he was buzzing around like a bee. He could hardly contain his excitement. He told me he was going to the White House as the Painter of Christmas, something he had always wanted to be. He showed me the program for the Pageant of Peace with his image on the cover.
“William Jefferson Clinton. What do you think he’s like?”
I told him I thought he had his fair share of personal issues, but he was one of the greatest presidents this country had ever had.
“I think so, too.” He grinned and added, “At least now I do!”
Thom and Nanette went to Washington, DC, to be on hand for the lighting of the tree ceremony, and Thom presented his painting to the president. Thom and Nanette even joined Bill and Hillary Clinton in the presidential box for the occasion. The painting was offered for sale at Thomas Kinkade galleries throughout the country, all of the proceeds going to the Pageant of Peace to support future National Christmas Tree lighting ceremonies. Thom had certainly achieved what he set out to be; he was finally the Painter of Christmas.
After his White House visit, Thom was very enthusiastic about Bill Clinton. He kept saying that he was a “hoot,” and referred to him as “Captain Bill” from then on.
In the wake of his success, Thom had also become a sought-after guest speaker for pastors and religious leaders. Even bigger than Bill Clinton, in Thom’s mind, was Billy Graham. Thom revered him. He was truly humbled when he was first invited to speak at a Billy Graham event. Speaking for Graham didn’t hold the excitement of being at the White House and being recognized as an artist, when the art establishment was trying its best to pretend he didn’t exist. Instead Billy Graham meant validation of his mission and his faith, and that was of paramount importance to Thom.
Thom later spoke at many Billy Graham events, and was even invited to place a large mural painting entitled The Cross in the Billy Graham Library. The painting shows a promontory jutting out above a vast and distant land, intersected by a cascading river far below. Clouds billow in from left and right, and atop the jutting rocks stands a cross, partially silhouetted against the sun setting on the horizon. The landscape is verdant and lush, and the sun casts a strong pink, orange, and yellow glow over the clouds. Intense rays project from the sun, inexorably drawing the eye, with the cross standing in opposition as though in a kind of duet or dialogue.
The biggest highlight of them all, surprisingly, came from Rome, the haven of that “fringe” religion called Catholicism. Pope John Paul II personally invited Thom to come to the Vatican to present him with a painting. When the news hit Media Arts headquarters, the whole company was aflutter. Of course Thom knew I had been raised a Catholic; he used to rib me about it.
“What’s up with this whole thing about the pope, Eric?”
“I don’t know what’s up, Thom. He’s the head of the Catholic church.”
“How can one man be the head of a church? Only God is the head of everything. What’s with that whole Catholic thing, anyway, praying to statues and buildings?”
“Thom, we don’t pray to buildings, and we certainly don’t pray to statues. The statues are there to inspire prayer.”
I was tolerated, but it was clear that Thom and his born-again compatriots at the company barely thought of Catholics as Christians at all. Even Ken would introduce me as, “This is Eric, our VP of licensing. He’s a Catholic Christian.”
It didn’t bother me. I thought it was kind of amusing, how being Catholic was considered fringe in Thom’s born-again circles.
Then out of nowhere, when Thom received an invitation for an audience with the pope, his entire tune changed overnight. Suddenly Thom was all about the pope. He was going to travel to the Vatican and present him with a painting titled Sunrise. It, too, was an epic image showing a massive cross, placed on a hill, overlooking a far and distant land of hills and mountains touched by hanging mist and clouds, and the rays of the rising sun.
On the day Thom arrived at the Vatican, he nearly missed his audience, his flight having been delayed. Terry Sheppard was trailing along, capturing every moment of Thom’s visit on tape. They raced through the streets of Rome and, by the glory of God, made it to see Pope John Paul II on time. They presented him with the painting in front of a crowd of thousands of people looking on in St. Peter’s Square. From then on, I never heard the end of it.
“That pope is a great man, Eric,” Thom would say.
“I’m glad you think so, Thom.”
“Yeah. He’s a holy man,” he said reverently.
I was never referred to as a Catholic Christian again.
Thom’s outreach was the most meaningful and important part of his work to him. Besides the long laborious hours he spent painting in the studio, Thom was happiest when he was out speaking to his fans. I saw people on their knees, praying, in tears. He elicited a devotion and fervor from his collectors and followers like I had never seen. It was moving to see the effect he had on people. It was exactly what he wanted; to touch people in a positive way. I met people who had read every one of his books. I encountered collectors who had turned their homes into shrines to Thom. They saw Thom, as he saw himself, as a messenger of God who was here to shine a light on the path of the Christian people, his faithful followers.
He made a strong impression up on stage, dressed in a nice dark suit with a button-up white shirt, his mustache neatly trimmed, his hair perfectly combed. He gestured openly with his hands to punctuate a point, and held the microphone with ease and confidence, pacing as he spoke, and measuring his pauses perfectly.
He spoke to his Christian followers, hitting at the hearts of their lives. He would caution them to stop and smell the roses. To slow things down. To embrace simpler times. I think he spoke from the heart. He always talked privately about his memories of the past and his own nostalgia for simpler times. I often felt that all the wealth and acquisitions he had weren’t making him as happy as when he was a boy in Placerville, running through the fields with nothing to his name except a connection to his creator.
“Look at you,” he said to the crowd. “There you are, buying that new car. You’ve got a new computer. You’re taking another vacation. But do you ever stop to wonder if you’re really in control? Are you running the things you’re pursuing, or are they running you? Do you really need these things?”
He made eye contact with everyone in the audience.
“Do you know what you need? You need to turn down the volume of life. The noise level is killing you, isn’t it?”
People in the audience would nod.
“You’ve got to turn it down. Start with your television. Do you really need to have it on every day? Why don’t you read a book instead? Read the Bible. Go outside. Listen to the birds singing. Gather your kids around you. Talk about memories. My paintings are there to remind you that you need to do that. You need to simplify, or you will get run over by the train of life.”
There would be more murmurs and nods, and a few tears in the audience by now.
“When is the last time you said ‘I love you’ to your wife? When is the last time you tucked a love letter under her pillow? Or surprised her with a gift when it wasn’t her birthday?”
By now everyone in the audience was feeling guilty for neglecting their significant other. Then Thom would move to the subject of the light.
“Here’s how easy it is. Come into the light. Step into the light in your life.”
Some people raised their hands to God. Some had tears in their eyes, overcome with emotion. Some bowed their heads in prayer. These moments often had the feel of a revival meeting.
“My paintings will be a reminder that you are called to a simpler life in which you appreciate all the wonderful things you have around you. God has designed a life for you that is simple and meaningful. He wants you to have a close relationship with him and with your family. Just look at me; that’s how easy it is. It’s what I’ve got, and what I wanted all along.”
It might seem there was irony in the fact that Thom was advocating simpler times for others, and living with less, while he himself lived a life full of luxury. But Thom didn’t see it that way at all. He always believed in what he was saying; it was the nostalgia he had for his own early life. He really believed that living simpler was better, and often told me that his life was happiest when he had nothing. However, he was also playing a certain role very convincingly, the role assigned to him by the company as the representative of the brand. He was a personality, a lifestyle, and a message. And whether he lived it himself or not, the message had to get out, and people loved to hear it.
Thom was completely separate from the process of selling the artwork. Even when he showed up at a collector event or a signature gallery, he came as the personality. He never hawked anything; the company was very careful to keep him away from the sales side. He was the Wizard of Oz. He stayed at home and painted the simpler times he advocated, and went out and met his adoring public, and talked about the messages in his paintings.
Perhaps that’s why it was hard to reconcile the duality of Thom’s personality. In those moments when I saw him speak, I saw Thom the brand, the personality, the legend. But somewhere inside was Thom the real flawed person. I know he believed the things he said. I think he dealt with the contradictions, and the pressures to live up to a legend and a perception of perfection, by compartmentalizing his mind, and by escape and denial. These habits are common among alcoholics. They are coping mechanisms. Instead of facing the contradictions, his fears and his shame, he had to project the best side of himself out to the world, and numb his unconscious shame and conflict with alcohol. And I believe both of these actions were justified in his mind as long as he was doing God’s work. It was a life of perpetual sin and atonement. But I have never doubted his conviction. There was nothing cynical in his belief that he had a special task given to him as the painter with a higher purpose. This ultimately exonerated him in his mind. It was all justified, all in a day’s work for someone who was a messenger from God.
Thom was really no different than any great artist you’ve read about in the history books. They were all tortured, driven by demons, and haunted by vices that often took them too young. He was obsessed with the idea. He often talked about Vincent van Gogh, and all the artists who died young, with a sense of identification and inevitability. Thom was sensitive, he was obsessed, and he had no choice in life but to paint. It was his lifeline and his destruction. Perhaps a certain suffering is necessary for any artist to be great. It’s the question of what comes first, which might never be answered. Are you an artist because you suffer, or do you suffer because you are an artist? Perhaps both are true.
Thom’s fervent following meant the company was practically minting money. Thom was an icon, and with his message, he had become a way of life. There were corporate discussions about how the brand had become larger than Martha Stewart or even Disney in its broadness of appeal. Thom would say that Disney would never sell its own furnishings the way he had done, and Martha Stewart would never open a theme park, but he was the kind of brand capable of pulling off both those possibilities. There were discussions of a Thomas Kinkade fragrance and Thomas Kinkade Sunday morning children’s TV programming. The only limit seemed to be what the imagination could hold—and Thom’s imagination was endless.
At one point early on Thom and I were brainstorming new ideas for licensing products, and I had jokingly mentioned making Thomas Kinkade–branded houses. Thom jumped right on the idea. At the time I didn’t think he was serious, but he brought up the idea years later when I had returned to work with the company.
“Eric, do you remember when you suggested that we license Thomas Kinkade houses for a development?”
“Thom, I was kidding.”
“I paint paintings of houses. Why can’t we do the whole house?”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “I think I can come up with a way to do it.”
Soon enough, we were contacting developers, architects, and city planners. We ended up signing a licensing deal with the Taylor Woodrow Company, a British company with an outpost in Los Angeles that was willing to build a development in Thom’s name in a tract-housing grid of suburban Vallejo, California. Thom wanted an English name and a rustic feel to it, just like his paintings. We settled on a name: The Village at Hiddenbrooke, a Painter of Light™ Community. When we looked at the plans drawn up by the architects, there were roads and houses that bore the titles of his paintings and names of locations in them. It was as close to designing a theme park as I could imagine. Later that year, his dream became a reality.
As the money poured in, Thom, Ken, and Rick never stopped spending. While I traded my Volvo in for a slightly used convertible Porsche, the three founders of the company were buying cars, cars, and more cars, and more houses and more boats. Thom bought a vintage Harley-Davidson and rode around town like a hardcore biker. He added a 1969 Mercedes SE convertible to his growing car collection, and a 1960s Porsche.
Thom also bought a historic 660-acre ranch, making a longtime dream come true. It was a working cattle ranch near Gilroy, California, nestled in the Diablo mountain range of San Benito County, just an hour away from Los Gatos. It was called the Doc Bar Ranch and had a history of quarter-horse breeding. The famed racehorse Doc Bar was buried on its grounds, with the headstone long lost and the location of the grave forgotten. Thom loved to head up to his ranch, get on a horse, and go on long cattle drives. He’d step out into the sunshine and paint the mountains, enjoying his whiskey and cigar on the veranda. Some days he read his favorite books in the hammock under the tall oak tree: James Michener novels, pulp fiction detective novels from the forties and fifties, history tomes. Other days he went off to shoot deer in the hills with pieces from his collection of guns and rifles. The house was the kind he always preferred: an old, historic adobe structure from the turn of the century, written into the Spanish land grants.
If he wasn’t on a horse, Thom was on his Harley cruising the Central Valley’s winding roads. He would take part in the annual Hollister Rally Harley Ride, famous for the motorcycle riot in 1947 that struck terror into the hearts of Americans. The story made it into Life magazine, a copy of which Thom owned. He even rode along on the weeklong Sturgis Rally in South Dakota, one of the largest motorcycle rallies in the world. Thom was always up for an adventure. You wouldn’t catch Ken or Rick dead on a Harley, much less in a crowd of bikers, but Thom wanted to taste as much of life as he could. In his quest, he was down to earth, nonjudgmental, unpretentious, and open to all flavors and strata of life.
Thom was a sentimental man. He loved the past and he loved remembering, because things were always better in memory than they were in the present. Having old things kept him in touch with the past, even if it was just his rumbling vintage Harley. He wasn’t a tough guy, but he would walk through town with his cigar, wearing his biker boots, his bike parked on the side of the road. He’d go into the nearest dive bar, the grittiest place he could find, where he’d chat up the guy on the next bar stool to find out what he was thinking about.
On one of many of these occasions I witnessed, Thom plunked himself down in a dark and dingy biker bar in San Jose and looked at that one old grizzled biker nursing his Wild Turkey on the rocks, sitting on a red vinyl bar stool. Thom turned to me and said quietly, “Look at him. Can you imagine the stories he has to tell?”
He then looked at the old biker again, and nodded to him. Thom was secure that no one knew him or recognized him in these places, so it was safe to simply strike up a conversation and begin to investigate someone’s life, which he loved to do.
“How are you today, sir?”
The biker would glower and try to ignore Thom. But Thom was too persistent and charismatic to ignore.
“What are you drinking there?”
“Wild Turkey,” the man would say.
“Mind if I buy you another?”
The biker glanced at him suspiciously. Then he shrugged and nodded; no one ever turned down free alcohol.
“Bartender! Bring us what he’s having. Three of them.”
The bartender poured our drinks, and Thom would start his questioning.
“So where are you from? How long have you been coming to this place? This is the most amazing bar. I’ve driven by a hundred times, but never came in.”
As the bartender and I watched, amused, Thom would delve into the man’s life and buy him several more rounds. Finally he’d leave with the story of another life; another connection made.
Thom talked to everyone, and everyone talked to him. He dressed up as Santa Claus at Christmastime and handed out presents to friends. He socialized with his Monte Sereno neighbors in their mansions, and he also knew the homeless in town personally. He had a spirit that wouldn’t quit; an appetite to know people, and to experience as much as possible.
The building validation by his business and his fans and followers had a significant impact on Thom as well. He actively sought to do good in the world, getting more involved in charities and philanthropy, giving his time to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, donating his art to charity auctions, and speaking to people whenever he could. I saw him speak to thousands at a time, and I saw how they really wanted to hear what he had to say. In those special moments, the nights of partying and drinking were forgotten. These were the moments that meant the most to Thom, and represented the peak of his happiness. Giving people hope was what he was really all about. The money was a game, and the toys were just that—toys.
At the peak of his success, never in the history of the world had an artist developed a brand like Thomas Kinkade. Never had a painter sold his work in the hundreds of millions. Thom was far more than art; he had become a brand. Popular artists like Peter Max and Leroy Neiman barely came close to the recognition Thom’s work garnered. Only Andy Warhol might be as recognizable as Thom had become. And Thom used to say, “Andy Warhol is my hero, and I’m his heir apparent.”
The critics such as San Francisco Chronicle’s Kenneth Baker and the Los Angeles Times’s Christopher Knight disagreed, and many had nothing but harsh things to say. Critics called his work mechanized, saccharine, and schlocky, and said it belonged in the trash. They called his paintings facsimiles of something inherently dead, and said that escapism is not art; and that Thom might as well be selling hamburgers. Essayist Joan Didion called his imagery creepy in that the cottages had such “insistent coziness as to seem actually sinister, suggestive of a trap designed to attract Hansel and Gretel.” She added that “every window was lit, to lurid effect, as if the house might be on fire.” University of Missouri art professor Brooke Cameron predicted that no one would remember Thomas Kinkade as an artistic innovator. He said there was no poetry in his work and it was kitsch, and that Thom was a male Martha Stewart.
I always felt these criticisms were much too harsh. I knew Thom’s art didn’t appeal to the modern art market, but I felt he was a considerable talent. When I watched him at work, I was amazed at what he would create in his long hours of painting. I felt he was a genius, whether one liked his imagery or not. For me, there was no discounting his immense talent.
Of course, Martha Stewart was music to everyone’s ears at the company. The comparison was hardly a problem for Thom. That was the point: to reach as many people as possible. Because of Thom’s belief that his art was also his ministry, and because he felt there was a higher calling to his selling and distributing as many images into the world as possible, he saw no reason to worry about its legitimacy in the art world. Thom was serving a higher god. He had no need to apologize for success. Success only meant that his silent messengers, his paintings, were spreading more peace and light in the world. Defending his place in the pantheon of art, he would declare, “Twenty million people can’t be wrong.” Indeed, tens of millions of people owned something published by Thomas Kinkade, which made up an estimated 10 percent of all Americans. Thom would opine, “David Hockney can’t say that!”
He didn’t endear himself to the art critics with such statements, but he wasn’t trying to. Thom would openly claim that in time Picasso would not be “regarded as the titan that he is now.” He characterized him as a man of great talent who hadn’t used his talent “in any relevant way,” and that he could create “three Picassos before breakfast because he could get ten thousand dollars each for them.” He saw no irony in criticizing Picasso for wanting to make money with his art, while he himself was selling his art “by the carload,” as the New York Times expressed it. He told the Times his art was populist and “wildly embraced by our own culture,” and that while he might not be endorsed by the critics, his heart belonged to the people. In another interview, he took on the foundation of the art world, the sanctity of the original: “Lots of artists have the opinion that publishing your work is selling out. They’re hung up on the one-of-a-kind thing. I’m a messenger. You can’t be one of a kind when you’re a messenger.”
To me Thom once said, “Eric, just imagine if I was Tom Clancy and I had just finished my fifteenth novel. And I spent nine months writing it. And then I decide to publish only one book. What good would that do? Money aside, how is that spreading or sharing the work? Tom Clancy sold forty-five million books. There’s a reason he doesn’t just print a hundred books. I’m the same way. I am going to print as many prints as people want to see.” Thom saw his prints as a novel. That was his way of sharing, of touching people’s lives.
Thom simply saw his art as ministry. Spreading his message to the world without restraint; a message of family, faith, and simpler times. He was anachronistic in that sense, living in another era in his mind. Reconciling the contradiction between the Thomas Kinkade who spoke about his values to thousands, and the Thom I saw heading out into the night was sometimes a challenge. But he was the first to acknowledge it himself. He managed his own contradictions by constant confession and humility.
“I don’t know why God chose someone like me.”
“I give credit to God. Everything I do is God working through me.”
“I’m a fallible human. I try my best, but I fall short.”
“Thank God we are forgiven.”
He never took credit for his painting. If someone paid him a compliment, he wouldn’t jump in and agree. His answer was always the same: a simple “thank you.” If someone pointed out how well things were going, he would always praise God. It was how he managed his own conflict, and how he appealed to his audience. They saw the humble man, the contrite man, the man seeking God’s light, striving for a better life. Whether or not he lived them all the time, I know Thom deeply believed in the values he preached.
At Media Arts, Thom’s values were selling tools. They were the brand. In executive meetings, the value of Thom’s message was good business. Once the Kirby salesmen had invaded the executive stratum of the company, anything that created a sale was fair game, and religion in Thom’s art, like sex in modern advertising, seemed to be the hottest sales tool they had. Thomas Kinkade University certainly incorporated religion as part of the mosaic of the business. Images were sold with religion by the inclusion of Bible quotes and biblical images. The “light” concept helped to develop consistency in the brand, and the Painter of Light trademark provided crucial brand-name recognition. Contrary to Thom’s being all about his ministry, Media Arts evolved into a company that seemed to be all about the sale.
Thom earnestly believed he was a chosen messenger of God, that his life’s purpose was to paint images that would not only touch people’s hearts, but literally change the world. He had a gift inside of himself, a gift he took no credit for. He had been blessed with this gift for a reason, and he was always focused on how he could use it to do God’s work in the world. He wasn’t cynical or calculating about it. The company used his gift as a sales tool, but for Thom it was his purpose in life.
Ken’s departure from the board, and from his position as CEO, had signaled a detrimental shift in the company’s values. Sales became the main driving motivation for everything Media Arts did. It wasn’t about the long term. It wasn’t about having a broader perspective, or about building and honing the image and the message for the long view. Scarcity drives value in the art market. The perception of scarcity of Thom’s images needed to be managed by the company, but it was undercut and ignored by the desire for sales at all costs.
Internally we analyzed the market all the time. Greg Burgess, Rick’s former Kirby sales associate who was acting CEO, famously told CNN that there were over forty walls in the average American home, and their job as a company was to figure out how to populate “every single wall in every single home and every single business throughout the world with his paintings.” We created spreadsheets of sales, counted the galleries, the products, the venues, the licenses and licensees, and calculated them against the American population. How much could be sold to how many people? Was there a risk of overexposure?
We called it the “brick wall.” It was always a baseline discussion in the company. We were always asking ourselves, “How much is too much? What is the right edition size? When do we hit the brick wall?” We would joke about it nervously, in a kind of gallows humor. If a truck with a shipment was delayed, we’d look at each other and say, “Must have hit the brick wall.” If sales dipped slightly after Christmas, an annual phenomenon, we’d kid, “It’s the brick wall.” But there was nothing funny about the thought.
It turned into a kind of game of hocus-pocus. It was brought up in meetings, when we would say, “It’s out there. The wall is lurking out there somewhere.” It was spoken about with a sense of apprehension. Like a monster we felt was lurking in the bushes, but one we just couldn’t see. Over and over again, we were convinced we had finally hit the brick wall.
Years ago, Kevin Sacher, former senior vice president of marketing, had come up with a crude method of calculating the market saturation potential, which he shared with management at a time when the signature galleries were just exploding. He added the number of planned yearly editions and the number of editions already sold, multiplied all the images over the current lifetime of the sales, and then divided this number into the population of the United States. At the time, he determined that a hundred million Americans owned some form of a Thomas Kinkade painting. He pointed out that if you included all the licensed products, that number would double. His final conclusion, which he wrote up in a memo, was that we had already reached the brick wall in the late nineties; that a limit had been reached, and the market demand could no longer sustain the output.
There was concern over his memo for a few days, and I sat in on a few meetings to discuss the issue. As the senior vice president of licensing, the sale of the art was not my area of expertise. I deferred to the sales team’s feelings about Kevin Sacher’s projections. In these meetings I had to let them be the experts. The “brick wall” sounded like an ominous thing, and something I didn’t want the company to hit. But if they said things were under control, I had to believe them. Licensing is the opposite of the art market; you want to sell as much as you can. There was no brick wall for licensed products.
These harbingers were quickly forgotten, and more editions were printed and more galleries were opened. Kevin Sacher was the only one who spoke out now and then, reminding us of his report. He’d warn us all: “I’m just saying, guys. I did the math. It doesn’t look good.” Then Thom would shatter another record, sell more prints, more calendars, more plates, and the idea of a brick wall seemed absurd. We never saw the monster coming. Instead all we saw was an endless demand.
Ultimately we had no blueprint to go by—no one in the history of the world of art had ever done what Thomas Kinkade and Media Arts were doing. The company was in unknown territory. It was anyone’s guess what would happen.
At the height of his success, there truly seemed to be no limit to Thom’s sales appeal and marketability. The licensed product possibilities were also endless: puzzles, rugs, bookmarks, wallpaper, and wrapping paper. The opportunities for invention and reinvention seemed infinite, and the public’s hunger for the newest Kinkade product appeared to be inexhaustible. I was doing my job, and my job was to sell as much as possible and create as many products as possible. That’s the beauty in licensing; the more reinventions of products in the market, the better for sales.
The sense of invincibility that pervaded Thom’s consciousness and the company’s sales strategy meant there was no calculation for oversaturation. It just didn’t seem to be a factor; the plan was no plan. Signature galleries continued to be opened—over four hundred of them by 2002—and paintings continued to be released into the market. Expansion was the name of the game, and it wasn’t questioned by management. We all believed it; I certainly did. The arguments for it were very sound on paper. It was what we needed to do as a public company. As mentioned earlier, even Thom welcomed the idea of taking some of the load off his shoulders. Expansion marched on. As long as there seemed to be demand, that demand was going to be met.
Starbucks Company saw growth similar to the signature galleries’ growth, with multiple locations opening so close to one another. The crush of competition began to diminish the exclusivity and the appeal of the brand. Supply and demand is a dance that must be well choreographed; too many dancers onstage make for a lousy performance. Too much growth, too fast, can lead to a forced contraction, as we saw with Starbucks closing over five hundred stores in 2008. But as long as there was room on that increasingly crowded stage, the company kept expanding.
Adding to the expansion of the sales tool for selling Thom’s art was the QVC network. QVC first aired Thomas Kinkade sales as early as 1998, and by 2002 they aired a regular broadcast from the Morgan Hill company headquarters. At the time, Thomas Kinkade was the only brand QVC allowed to sell off-site from their headquarters in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Media Arts spent millions to build a living room in Morgan Hill, from which remote shows were broadcast on the QVC channel, featuring Thom and his art. Thom went on camera to speak to the audience about his art. He described his symbolism in the different prints, and the number of Ns he embedded; he gave his messages of hope and simpler times. He would smile into the camera and speak to every viewer as though they were sitting together in their living room.
“This is one of my favorite pieces. It’s a house I drive by every day when I’m at my home in Carmel-by-the-Sea. I just love the light when it first comes up from the east and touches the oaks of the shore, and the houses perched about the ocean, like this one.”
Media Arts never wanted Thom to appear as though he was selling his own artwork. Thom was always kept far away from sales, and entirely on message. So on the QVC show, he was simply speaking as the celebrity artist. He left the actual selling to Dan Wheeler, a frequent host of the show.
Dan would step in and ask questions and guide the conversation.
“You are, of course, called the master of light. What is it about the light that interests you?”
“I see light as more than just a physical dimension; I see it also as a spiritual dimension. Something that I think gives hope to people. I’ve always had the goal, through my artwork, to inspire people’s hearts, give them a little hope. Remind them that every day the sun comes up and it’s a brand new day.”
“That’s right, your art does inspire hope and many good feelings. We hear from our viewers all the time, how happy they are that they purchased one of your images.”
Then Dan Wheeler would turn to the camera and make his final push.
“And folks, for only fifty-nine ninety-nine, this beautiful, inspiring print can be yours. We’re going to make it especially interesting by offering a twenty percent discount to the first one hundred callers. Pick up that phone and give us a call, so that you can have this beautiful Thomas Kinkade print for your own, before they all sell out. And folks—they always do.”
And the art sold in the millions of dollars every hour.
A fine line was being trod, but this time it was overlooked. The name Thomas Kinkade stood for many things. The name was message, it was lifestyle brand, and it was art. But could all of these be reconciled? Unlike a Martha Stewart product, Thom’s art was very specific and didn’t change. He had his program, and he followed it to a tee. He painted cottages, gardens, lighthouses, bridges, gates. Every year he would paint a new bridge, a new gate, a new cottage. This created a desire in collectors to have the next lighthouse and collect his work along themes. But it also created somewhat stagnant imagery over time.
The necessity to nurture the market as an art market was crucial to the product. This wasn’t house paint. Or a Mickey Mouse trinket. These were paintings—art—that purported to have a market value as well as a spiritual value. There is something intangible about how an art market sustains itself and its product; a certain sleight-of-hand that keeps any given artist at the top of the heap. If every collector were to decide that a certain artist’s work had no appeal, then that artist’s value would instantly plummet. An artist like Keith Haring, once highly valued in the eighties art boom, suddenly dropped with the perception of his commercialism, only to start climbing again twenty years after his death. The sale by influential collector Charles Saatchi of his entire collection of Sandro Chia, a highly valued artist in the eighties, caused Chia’s market value to plummet. It is, in a sense, a perpetual bubble kept intact by those with a stake in its continuation.
This is why the sales-at-all-cost approach to selling art, in an art market based on limited editions and scarcity, was a dangerous game to play. Licensing was based on the idea that more was certainly merrier. But the art market, even Thom’s less sophisticated art market, had a mind of its own. However, it seemed to me that little thought was given to the careful development and cultivation of his core market by the people at MAGI, who appeared to be ultimately uninformed and possibly unqualified.
Not everyone was unaware of the saturation problem. Those watching from the outside voiced concern. In an interview with USA Today, a business and marketing expert, Peter Sealey, is quoted saying, “I think he’s got too much stuff out there, and as supply exceeds demand, you’ll see a decline in interest.”
In the end, it often came down to Rick Barnett and his opinion. Everyone in the meetings always turned to him.
“What do you think, Rick? Are we hitting a wall?”
Rick pulled out his briefcase, put on his reading glasses, contemplatively shuffled his papers, and read deliberately as the rest of us watched with bated breath. He put on and took off his glasses several times, then tapped on his calculator watch, tap-tapping as the twelve executives in the room looked on. He finally flung his glasses down, looked around the table, and said that we now had 180 people on our waiting list.
Holding up the list for emphasis, he added that he was opening galleries as fast as he could, and saw no end to the demand. The idea of hitting the wall anytime soon was quickly dismissed, and more and more galleries were opened.
But the signs were there. By 2000, fifteen galleries had closed. They hadn’t been able to keep up with the mandatory inventory purchases from the company, and hadn’t been able to generate the sales needed to sustain the day-to-day operation of the galleries. By that time, Ken and I had left the company, and if anyone had concerns over the closing of the first galleries, they were not discussed with us at that time. From the outside, it looked like business as usual.
In a sense, there was never much incentive in taking too close a look. The company was raking in huge amounts of money, everyone was profiting, everyone owned stock, and everyone got their Christmas bonuses. No one wanted to rock the boat, and the boat was the stock price. As long as that remained healthy, hovering around the $30 a share price, everyone was content not to fix what wasn’t broken.
It was always about Wall Street. The stock value and quarterly earnings were pressures that loomed continuously. Since Media Arts was a public company in which people owned stock, investors cared about its financial health and its valuation on Wall Street. Media Arts employees monitored the chat rooms and financial blog sites on which investors posted, to keep abreast of the word on Wall Street. One day it came to the attention of Tim Guster, general counsel at Media Arts, that an anonymous Yahoo! Finance chat room contributor with the name “Eyes Nose” was regularly posting about Media Arts and Thomas Kinkade. Using expletives and insults, Eyes Nose was badmouthing the company to an extreme, claiming calamities and mismanagement, and predicting imminent doom. And worst of all, he was tearing into Thom’s character and the company’s Christian ethos with extremely disparaging, obscenity-laden attacks that were shocking to anyone who read them. Copies of the transcripts made the rounds at the company, everyone puzzling over this apparent “agitator” taking such brutal aim at Thom and the company. People wondered what could possibly be the reason. Was he trying to drive the value of the stock down with his negative rants, in order to short the stock?
Then one day, the anonymous agitator crossed the line. He started hinting at information only senior executives at the company could have known. And he threatened to disclose Thom’s home address. Tim Guster decided to take matters into his own hands. He filed a lawsuit against Yahoo! to force them to disclose the identity of Eyes Nose, as he was posing a potential threat to Thom’s security. The suit dragged on, and during the discovery period Guster subpoenaed the information on Eyes Nose from Yahoo! On the last day of compliance, Yahoo! reluctantly gave up the name of the Internet service provider for Eyes Nose. Guster filed another subpoena asking the Internet service provider to disclose the identity of Eyes Nose. Before the last day of the mandated compliance, Guster heard a knock on his door and Eyes Nose entered his office. It was someone inside the company; in fact, someone on the Kirby crew.
Guster reported the incident to Thom, and then to senior management and the board that day. Action was taken immediately. The culprit was soon gone from the company, and Eyes Nose stopped posting in the Yahoo! Finance chat room.
Soon Greg Burgess ended up paying the price for the incident, since it happened on his watch, and there was a general feeling on the board that he should have seen it and prevented it. The board called a meeting at Thom’s beach house in Carmel-by-the-Sea. Greg knew he was going to be fired. He was being given one last opportunity to talk to the board about the incident and his future at the company. As a formal board meeting, there was a roomful of people: Thom, Ken Raasch, board member Tony Thomopoulos, and others. Of course Ken was there in his position as the largest shareholder. He had as much concern and say in the matter as anyone did, and probably a healthy dose of silent “I told you so.”
I heard later about what had happened. Greg Burgess arrived an hour late, which irritated everyone. According to Thom, Greg finally stumbled inside with a bloody bandage wrapped around his head, saying he had been in a terrible car accident. Someone asked if they should call 911. But Greg exclaimed, “No!” Then he slowly began to unwrap the bloody bandage from his head and added that he was just kidding. There was no head wound; there was no accident. Greg said the bandage was just a metaphor for the condition of the company, and that he was trying to show his passion for the job by showing he would go to any lengths to fix things. He said he had a plan. Everyone in the room was dumbfounded. Their CEO seemed to have lost control of his faculties.
Greg pulled out a sheaf of papers and told the group that he had a “new plan” for the company. He was immediately dismissed from the room and from his job, and asked never to return.
The board had a problem on their hands now: they needed a CEO. In that very meeting, after Greg was gone, they turned to Tony Thomopoulos and asked him if he would be willing to come out of retirement and come on board as interim CEO until a suitable replacement could be found. Tony didn’t need the money or the headache, but he agreed to help out.
As a founding member and Thom’s closest confidante, Rick was, of course, the last man standing. But the Kirby era of sales at all costs had finally come to an end—at least for the time being.
Tony Thomopoulos was the former president of ABC Television and former chairman of United Artists. He was not only a member of the board, but also a friend of Ken’s and mine. He had acted as a consultant during many of the early years, when Ken was developing CinemaClips and he and Thom had a vision of getting the Thomas Kinkade business into Hollywood.
When Greg Burgess was fired, Tony agreed to take on the job for six months. Tony was married to Cristina Ferrare, a former supermodel, and they brought a Hollywood touch to the company that was glamorous on paper. He would have just as gladly spent his days enjoying his well-earned retirement instead of taking over the helm of the juggernaut that Media Arts was, but he did it as a favor to Thom. Tony had become friendly with everyone over the years he consulted for the company, and he liked Thom personally. Tony was also a Christian, and thus fit in with the company’s sensibilities. He was competent, responsible, and conscientious, just what the company needed after the turmoil experienced under the leadership of the former CEO.
Tony was the Hollywood elite, handsome and dashing, with long gray hair and aviator sunglasses; always well dressed. He and Cristina were a Bel Air couple, raising their beautiful children, and Christina was busy starting several businesses with Tony’s help. Every week Tony got into his powder-blue Mercedes-Benz 350 CLK convertible with the white leather interior and the shiny chrome wheels. He would leave his perfect life and drive the three hundred miles to San Jose to the chaotic and dysfunctional Media Arts.
On one of his first days there, I was present with others to greet him and show him the workings of the company. Tony looked around and said the company was in serious disarray. He ended up dutifully overseeing the company for the next two years, after he had agreed to only six months, jetting back and forth between his home in Los Angeles and San Jose, without ever having planned to do so. He held things together well enough for the machine to keep churning; he was a well-spoken representative for the company and made many important contributions.
Early in Tony’s tenure as CEO, a senior-level sales executive recommended the company participate in a one-time sale of Thomas Kinkade prints at the discount outlet Tuesday Morning. The company needed extra capital since sales had been down with galleries closing, and Wall Street pressures had only increased. Tony had the unenviable task of helping to decide whether the sale of very dated inventory would anger or alienate the existing customer base of the signature galleries. Because the items offered would be paper prints and not the highly sought after canvas transfers, Tony’s team recommended the sale be approved. There was much discussion at the time about whether the sale should proceed. The discussion even made it over to my office, where Tony asked Ken and me what we thought. My response was that I was not close enough to the details, and suggested that maybe the signature gallery owners should be polled. I’m not sure what exactly happened after our discussion, but the sale went through, and it created a firestorm of controversy. If the discount sale didn’t send the company into further oversaturation of the market, to some it gave the appearance of desperation.
Vallejo, California, is a suburban outskirt of the San Francisco Bay, the tenth most populous city in the area, and the home to the Six Flags Discovery Kingdom theme park (formerly Marine World Africa USA). Mainly a tract housing grid, it became the home for the Thomas Kinkade Village inside the Village at Hiddenbrooke, a planned development of ten related communities, all inspired by the Painter of Light.
Beside a Smorga Bob restaurant and a Rite Aid stood a billboard by the freeway advertising GET AWAY, EVERY DAY. THE VILLAGE AT HIDDENBROOKE, with images of golf greens, leisurely dressed golfers, and steak dinners. The village itself abutted the edge of Vallejo, beyond which the land emptied into brushy hills and farmland. The Hiddenbrooke development spread over thirteen hundred acres, with a golf course at its center.
On March 16, 2002, the day of the ribbon-cutting ceremony, I rode out to Vallejo with Thom and his family, to be on hand for the occasion. He wanted me to come, since the spark of the entire endeavor had begun in one of our brainstorming sessions. Nanette sat beside him as Thom looked out the window at Vallejo speeding past.
“Isn’t this just a glorious day?” he exclaimed. “Did you ever think we would do it?”
“I knew we would,” I answered.
“Well, you are really the one who did it, Eric. You pulled this whole thing off. I can’t wait to see it all in person.”
“I’m sure you’re gonna love it,” I said.
He turned to Nanette and squeezed her hand.
“Remember, honey, when we first met? I barely had a roof over my head back then. Now I’m building houses for people!”
When we arrived, a huge crowd had gathered, eager to catch a glimpse of the Painter of Light, and to have a view into one of the model homes.
We had marketed the village with all of Thom’s branding. Our brochure touted the village as a vision of “simpler times,” and called it a “neighborhood of extraordinary design and detail.” Thom had wanted to create cottage-style homes “filled with warmth and personality,” and a “garden-style landscaping with meandering pathways, benches, water features and secret places.” The cover of the brochure featured one of Thom’s paintings, which showed a rain-drenched village with a church steeple and a family out on a walk with their dalmatian, spring flowers cascading all around them.
Thom’s vision was that this village would bring to life the quaint cottages and gazebos and the lush garden landscapes right out of his paintings. On closer look, the area looked much like any generic development of tract houses, with concrete patios and bare lawns. No church steeple in sight and no town square; just the developer’s square-foot planning. The 101 nearly identical tract homes were squeezed fairly close together, were bordered by a stone wall and gate. The Kinkade village was neighbored by other communities with names like St. Andrews, The Heights, and The Masters.
Four model homes were open to the public, with the names Everett, Winsor, Chandler, and Merritt, after Thom’s four daughters. Each home was designed in a particular architectural style, such as Tudor or Victorian, but it was just that: with architectural detail in terms of the style, but not in design. And certainly nothing like the thatched-roof cottages of Thom’s paintings.
Thom and the company did not design or construct the houses. The Taylor Woodrow Company had designed the houses and submitted plans to my department and to Thom for approval. There was a financial reality to the strictures inherent in that process. A price point had to be met to be able to offer the houses at $400,000 each, and that meant certain limitations were unavoidable. To approximate the Thomas Kinkade look, the firm focused mainly on adding gabled roofs, dormers, and white picket fences. The patios were very small, and the fireplaces were only gas. Landscaping was too expensive for the company to maintain without having sold any of the individual spec houses so, save for a few daisies, there were dirt lots instead of the lush blooming gardens of his paintings.
There was a ribbon-cutting ceremony with the mayor of Vallejo, who handed Thom the big oversized scissors. A stage and podium had been set up for Thom, at which he spoke to a rapt audience of about a thousand. Terry Sheppard was also there to document the momentous event with his video camera. Thom’s four daughters and his mother, Mary Ann, stood with him as well, the girls lined up in a row by height and age.
Thom stood in front of the crowd and looked over the distant mountains and the California brush that led toward Placerville, and his voice echoed through the microphone.
“Being here today with you all means an awful lot to me. This development is a lifelong dream come true. To make my paintings and my vision come to life in these beautiful homes is like God painting me a miracle. Who would have thought that that scrappy boy from Placerville would one day come here to cut the ribbon on his very own housing development in the beautiful Vallejo Hills.”
Thom was visibly emotional as he spoke, the crowd nodding and smiling and with him all the way, as Thom gestured into the distance.
“This is my backyard. This is like home to me. If you look closely, you can see Placerville up there, toward that ridge. All of that is El Dorado County, where I grew up fishing and running around with my brother doing boy things. And picking flowers and courting my future wife, who is still right beside me today.”
The crowd applauded for Nanette as she waved and smiled into the audience.
“And my four beautiful daughters and my mother are here, too.”
The crowd cheered even more. Thom gave his mother a squeeze around the shoulders.
“I wouldn’t be here without this woman,” he exclaimed.
Mary Ann smiled modestly, clearly so proud of her son. Then Thom leaned in to the microphone and continued his speech.
“I must have looked over these desert shrubs many times and thought they were nothing but dry land. If somebody had told me then I’d have my own village built here one day, I would have laughed them right out of town.”
He grabbed the podium and looked around the houses, fashioned after his paintings. His eyes glowed and his voice quivered.
“This is home. This is really home. It’s going to be home for a lot of good people; a lot of loving families. There’s nothing that could make me happier right now.” Then he raised his arms to the crowd excitedly. “My paintings have come to life!”
There was a big cheer, and Thom stood taking it all in, dabbing at the corners of his eyes, Nanette patting him on the back.
After the ceremony, Thom posed for photographs with Nanette and his four beautiful daughters and mother. Three news crews and their vans were on hand to cover the event. Thom was elated. He beamed for the cameras, his arms around Nanette and his girls. He joked with the newspeople and cameramen.
“Have you signed up for a house of your own yet?” he asked jokingly.
People would grin and shake their heads. “We hope to one day, Mr. Kinkade.”
“Well, you keep hoping, all right? Never lose hope.”
His enthusiasm was infectious. He waved as he walked on.
“Don’t you leave here before you get yourself a house, all right? Tell ’em Thom sent you!” And he was off again.
He toured the entire village and talked to people about the sources of the names of the cottages and the streets with names like Wisteria Circle and Rose Arbor Way. He couldn’t believe he was seeing his paintings brought to life; houses that bore the names he had once given his imaginary cottages, such as Lilac Cottage, Stillwater Cottage, and Gingerbread Cottage.
Thom had tears in his eyes as he paced the streets with me, exclaiming at every detail and every nod to his legacy.
“Look at that. They got it down, didn’t they, Eric? Looks just like the painting. Now isn’t that something?”
I had seen him at many functions, openings, and special events, but I had never seen him as emotional as he was with the opening of his village.
The model homes were decorated with Thomas Kinkade furniture that was not included in the purchase. Framed photos of generic happy-looking families sat on the mantels, and chintz and florals covered the sofas and drapes. Thom’s prints covered the walls of the houses, with as many as fourteen pieces in each. The children’s rooms were decorated in horse and golf themes, and the libraries had books on the shelves. Ironically there wasn’t a Bible in sight. Perhaps it was just an oversight, but a big one, given Thom’s Christian following.
I will never forget that day, nor Thom’s reaction to the event. It was moving to see him walk through a construction of his vision, the manifestation of his dreams made real. This was his own Disneyland, with the dream and hope for simpler times and the family togetherness his paintings promised, and which his collectors deeply yearned for.
I watched Nanette stand lovingly at Thom’s side and smile as he held in his tears. Nanette might not have approved of his late-night carousing, but she must have understood his weaknesses and forgiven him, knowing the grandeur and magnitude of the man’s achievements, as well as the boy inside.
If there was a peak, a height of heights for Thom’s happiness, then I saw it on that day. Perhaps the sheer scope of his achievements struck him all at once. Perhaps the emotions of a young boy who once had only a dilapidated trailer to live in, and no food in the house, overwhelmed him. Perhaps it was the ultimate manifestation of his vision; something no other artist had ever done. And perhaps he sensed this was a turn in his fortunes, the beginning of the end. It was nothing Thom would articulate at that time, but I’ve always thought back to his nostalgia that day with the feeling there was more to it than met the eye; a premonition perhaps. I would never see him quite so happy again.
The writing was on the wall.
By the end of that year, Media Arts had posted four straight quarters of losses.