NEW LIFE FOR THE PAINTER OF LIGHT

The initial impression he leaves may be that of a sort of Bloggy Faulkner, with maybe a little Hunter S. Thompson thrown in, but Velociman has his sensitive side. Lookee: I snarfed the striking Sunset Image at left from his very own Web-Log, an image no less beautiful for the fact that it was captured with a cellphone.

When an image resonates with your soul, any means of capture will do.

Some prefer the digital camera; others still swear by the older technology of film. And there are yet others who are too constrained by the strait Way of Science, and for whom only the Illustrative Arts will do. Painting, drawing, the like.

Such a person is Thomas Kinkade, the “Painter of Light” in the words of his Marketing Gurus. Kinkade is a master at painting such pastoral scenes as a rustic cottage at dusk, interior glowing with a lusty fire in the hearth, exterior lit by the rays of the setting sun. For Kinkade, light is more than mere illumination; it is the very presence of the Spirit of Gawd.

Sadly, Thomas Kinkade’s Ars Rusticana Plebeianica may be on the verge of playing itself out. Kinkade has had personal and business issues of a sort not unknown to the Successful Panderer to the Popular Base Instinct, and a few of his Arte Shoppes have fallen on hard times. Several months ago, the Kinkade store at Perimeter Mall closed its doors, only to reopen as a gallery featuring oversized paintings and sculptures of martinis and motorcycles. Talk about the ol’ Pendulum o’ Taste swinging...

And yet...and yet...

As I looked at the VelociSunset above, it put me in mind of Thomas Kinkade. It’s precisely the sort of image that could have been captured by his painterly hand: the setting sun partially obscured by clouds, with fingerlike shafts of light extending outwards from a central focus. The Spirit of Gawd lighting up the clouds, as it were.

But there was something else that was strangely familiar about that sunset. What could it be? Sunrise? Sunset?



And then I thought of the times Man made the sun rise on Earth. Thermonuclear sunrise! A new subject for the Painter of Light: a light so intense, it could turn him into a charcoal briquet at five miles distance!



How ’bout that for a career booster? Fuck them thatched cottages, those warm, glowing hearths! We’ll give you a warm glow, yowza! Thomas Kinkade, Painter of the Light of a Thousand Suns, bringing you his interpretation of the Castle-Bravo shot!