Who is Thomas Kinkade?
His Story
by Karendelac

Thomas Kinkade was born 19th January 1958 of German/Irish heritage. Born the second child of Bill and Mary Anne, William Thomas Kinkade III arrived in Sacramento, California, on Jan.19,1958. and grew up in Placerville, California, (near Sacramento) with his mother, older sister and younger brother. His father left the family and he was raised primarily in a single family household.

Thom Discovers His Talent Early

It was Tom's Kindergarten Teacher that told Tom's mother that one day he would be a great artist ....

Soon his family knew at a very young age that Thom was a gifted artist. At age 4, he was correcting the perspective of a roadway that his sister had drawn beside a house in a picture! From that age on, his direction was set. By age 13, he was painting at a professional level in oil, much to the amazement of his fine art teachers at the local high school. He sold his first painting at age 11 for $7.50. The woman who bought it remembered thinking at the time, "I'd better hold onto this picture. It will probably be worth something someday."

Thom Attends Art School

Thom chose Berkeley for his first two years of college. During his years at Berkeley, but at Berkeley, the philosophy seemed to be, "Express yourself, FOR yourself" in a very self-absorbing , self-focused way. The Berkely ethics and mores were not something Thom could agree with and so left and he enrolled at the Art Center College of Design located in Pasadena, California.

Thom Writes His First Book

In Berkeley, he met and became fast friends with a fellow artist by the name of James Gurney, who later became the author of the best selling book "Dinotopia". When Gurney joined Thom at the Art Center, the two decided to take an adventure over the summer aboard boxcars. They would stop by pubs and start out by sketching the bartender. Thom would give the sketch to the barkeep and ask if he could paint the patrons that came in. The bartenders usually said yes and Thom would set-up at the end of the bar with a jar and a sign that read, "ketches - $2.00". People enjoyed the sketches so much that Thom and Jim thought it would be a great idea to teach people how to sketch. So they said, "Let's write a book". One night they spent hours on the pier above the Hudson River and banged out what became "The Artist's Guide to Sketching". The book is now worth about $500.00, if you can find one.

Thom Returns to Placerville

In 1983, Placerville Library commissioned Thom to do a painting of the town to hang in a new library facility. He researched the history of Placerville through oral histories, archival photographs and old fire-insurance maps. He chose a rainy afternoon to give it a nostalgic feeling, and he recruited friends and family to pose for the central figures. He even painted a miniature self-portrait on a poster hanging on the wall below the post office sign. Prints were made and sold from a card table outside the local grocery store for $35.00 apiece as a fundraiser for the Friends of the Library. Five years later they were reselling in local galleries for prices as high as $2,000.00.

Thom Publishes His First Piece

In 1984, Thom traveled to Alaska where he met a bush pilot, Hoppy Harrower. Thom decided that he wanted to paint a suite in the Yukon, so he told the pilot he would give him the original of the first work he painted, worth $4,000.00, if he would fly him around the area for 3 weeks. The painting became known as "Dawson". It was Thom''s first published painting in 1984.

Thom Paints "Yosemite, Artist's Point...Wins Founder's Award

In 1989, 2700 American artists were invited to compete in a contest by the National Parks Service. The subject was Yosemite. 2700 Artists submitted their Paintings. The top 100 artists would be judged and the run-off would be held in Jacksonhole, Wyoming. Thom painted "Yosemite, Artist''s Point" and made it to the top 100. It was determined that Thom''s painting was good enough to make the semi-finals. The top 18 were then judged and the 9 best went to the finals. Thom won, #1 place and his work was chosen for that award.

"Yosemite, Aritst's Point" is the ONLY Thomas Kinkade image ever made into a postage stamp.

Thomas Kinkade works for Disney Studios

Kinkade began work for the motion picture industry at age 22. He did an important apprenticeship at Walt Disney Studios, where he honed his scenery skills through work on background design, (in the day before computer enhanced animation they used hundreds, even thousands of individual "cells"). Chief among those was Fire And Ice.

Disney's influence on Kinkade's style would continue through the years, as images of thatched cottages from travels abroad, were met with a near magical warmth and romantic idealism. Here we find images such as "Emerald Isle Cottage" imbued with the thousand shades of Irish green, and his trademark use of light, which is actually a layering technique. He personally created over 600 background paintings for the animated feature film, Fire and Ice. This intensive period of work for the movie business demonstrates how Tom was drawn to master the special effects of lighting and images even in his early 20s.

Tom falls in love

During the summer of that same year, Thomas had a paper delivery route for the Sacramento Bee newspaper. While making his rounds to the homes in Placerville, Thomas encountered a beautiful blond girl standing beside a moving van. "It's difficult to imagine the impact that this first sight of Nanette had on me,"Kinkade has said. Thomas and Nanette became constant companions and partners in planning a life together. They would talk for hours about their future. Many of these dreams have more than surpassed the expectations of those early days of their relationship.

His growing popularity and financial stability now allowed Thomas to propose to his childhood sweetheart. On May 2, 1982 Nanette Willey and Thomas Kinkade were married and soon after settled in their own home just north of Placerville. The year 1983 saw the fulfillment of another dream for Thomas and Nanette. "Nanette and I took our life savings and printed our first limited editions,"Thomas remembers. They were a great success and sold out quickly. Plans were then laid with friend, Ken Raasch, for what would become Lightpost Publishing.

Two years later, in 1985, the first of Thomas and Nanette's four daughter's arrived. Merritt and Chandler were both born in Placerville, followed by the births of Winsor and Everett, in the South Bay area of San Francisco. With their family complete in 1997, Thomas realized another personal dream. In 1996, Thomas, his father Bill and younger brother Patrick, retraced Bills World War II memories with a trip through the British Isles and France. The new book, "Chasing the Horizon", was the result of this amazing journey for the Kinkade men. The book was published in 1997.

His painting continued to attract international interest. Thomas was invited to the White House to usher in the first Christmas of the new millennium with the Clintons'. Thomas and Nanette had the honor of being invited by Queen Elizabeth II to the 60th birthday celebrations of the Queen Mother. Thomas Kinkade's works were displayed at this spectacular gala, bringing work to the attention of European collectors. It was around this period that many galleries representing Thomas' work opened in the U.S. and Great Britain.

Awards have followed Kinkade's work wherever it is presented. The National Association of Limited Edition Dealers (NALED) has named him graphic artist of the year nine times between 1995 and 2004. Thomas Kinkade received a Special 25th Anniversary Award in 2004 recognizing him as the Most NALED Award Winning Artist in the Past 25 Years. His artwork has also been named Graphic/Lithograph of the Year ten times.

Lionsgate Films in Hollywood is now in production for a movie based on the art and life of Thomas Kinkade. Filming is set to begin shooting next month and casting will be finalized shortly. As a result, the first ever Thomas Kinkade motion picture is scheduled for wide release in theaters this Christmas season!

"The Christmas Cottage", starring Jared Padalecki (Thomas Kinkade), Tegan Moss (Nanette Kinkade), and Peter O'Toole (Glen Wessler) is inspired by the early life of Thomas Kinkade, is the story of how a small community and an aging mentor come to the aid of a family to save the only home they have ever known; and along the way teach a young man the meaning of love, friendship, and what it means to be an artist.