Huh. Shameful as it may be to admit, I kinda like a lot of his stuff. And probably for the reason noted at the end of Joe Carter’s appreciation (depreciation?) linked above:
The cottage is a self-contained safe place where the viewer can shut himself in and get away from the harsh realities of creation, particularly away from other people. The Cottage by the Sea offers a place where the viewer can enter the perfect world of Kinkade’s creation—and escape the messy world of Kinkade’s Creator.
And it’s not specifically The Cottage By The Sea I like, but all his wintry little cottage-themed things. When I was ten I lived for a winter in a log cabin in western Montana, near the shores of Flathead Lake. Nights were cold and sometimes a bit scary to me. I imagined I could hear wolves howling some nights, though that was just my imagination. But our cabin felt snug and warm and reassuringly full of familial love. Even though those six months between November 1979 and April 1980 were the only months of my life I lived outside of Southern California, I still have strongly pleasant associations with warm incandescent light, walled off from a cold and probably uncaring outside world.
Kinkade had lots of talent, but I think a great deal of it was squandered in crass attempts to appeal to the nostalgia (false or otherwise) of people like me. But I’m not gonna pretend that none of his stuff manages to improve my day. I’m not an evangelical Christian, and haven’t been any sort of Christian in twenty-five years or so. I’ve never owned any of his stuff, never been really tempted to buy any of it. And I get why he’s so reviled. But I like to look at a lot of his stuff. I’m never gonna argue that Red Vines are Nature’s Perfect Food in anything close to complete seriousness. But I do enjoy eating them.
