Painter of Light

"Our whole being is nothing but a fight against the dark forces within ourselves."

-Henrik Ibsen

"The last horizons I could see are now resigned to memories

I never thought I'd still be here today

Drink enough of anything to make myself look new again

Drunk drunk drunk in the gardens and the graves"

-Doug Hopkins

Listening to it thunder and trying to find the motivation to do a little billable work today. My goal is to file a summary judgment motion in the cases where one makes sense, once a day for the next week. Let's get some files closed, folks.

Still reeling from the difficulty of this last round of finals. Learning a little humility, which I didn't think I needed. This last shibboleth of mine, of my academic invincibility, finally comes crashing down. But at least I'm still in the game, and will dust myself off and attack it again during the summer semester, inshallah.

In my morning reading meander I ran across an article about a new BBC documentary profiling Thomas Kinkade, the so called "Painter of Light". If you're a white person my age who spent the last few decades in the Republican social milieu, I can guarantee you've seen a print of his work.

The article quotes a handful of feisty art critics bemoaning the banality of his paintings. Although I'd never have one in my home--the neighbors would think Ol' Donk had gone soft, and I can't imagine a room in a Peg decorated home where this would be even remotely okay--I have to admit I find the images comforting, even idyllic. As a kid whose childhood was spent being dragged from one tract home to another, year-after-year, I always yearned to be in a space like that, and it seems a lot of Americans agreed.

As it turns out, poor Kinkade carried some similar motivations. He grew up in a poor, chaotic household, the exact opposite of the inviting and cozy images in his paintings. As an adult, he tried to create a family that was the embodiment of the American Christian ideal, and became a culture warrior before that was really a thing.

But there was a dark side. Eventually his family blew apart, he took up womanizing and drinking and drugs, and shortly after he returned from rehab died of a mixture of alcohol and valium. He was 54, apparently a tortured soul as he created scenes of peace and security.

Later they found a stash of lost paintings that were a little less kitschy, a little more pained.

A lot of turmoil in there. The first one's sort of tough to look at, but certainly captures something of the man. Frankly, the shack here, painted long before his later made-for-QVC stuff, is the best of the lot.

The Shack. The painting reminds me as I sit here of the nonsense book of the same name that became popular just as Kinkade's paintings of thatched cottages nestled in verdant valleys took hold. God as a happy Aunt Jemimah cooking us all pancakes. Absurd. Coincidence that the book and the paintings were a huge commercial success at the same time? I reckon not. It was the zeitgeist, and the saccharine nostalgia became the fertile soil from which MAGA arose.

But trying to maintain that undemanding facade of goodness and warmth carries its price. In Kinkade's case it apparently was a total psychological break, as the darkness we all carry around swept over him and eventually consumed this tragic figure. Doug Hopkins, whose lyric from the song Lost Horizons begins this post, was the lead singer of one of my favorite law school era bands, Gin Blossoms. Hopkins met a similar end, shooting himself in the parking lot of an alcohol rehab center after his intake interview. He didn't have a sunny exterior, and certainly wasn't much of a marketer like Kinkade. Just another guy who self-medicated himself into oblivion, getting fired from the band for chronic, constant drunkenness just before their platinum album New Miserable Experience was released. The songs we all heard on the radio, filled with regret and heartbreak and a little reverie, were written by him, but he never lived into that success. A tragedy.

Obviously the mind wanders this morning. Still enjoying the thunder and lightning, and the near darkness of this unlit office as the rain pours down outside. The very opposite of a Kinkade painting, but a happy place for your author.