[3] He is notable for achieving success during his lifetime with the mass marketing of his work as printed reproductions and other licensed products by means of the Thomas Kinkade Company.

[5] He grew up in the town of Placerville, graduated from El Dorado High School in 1976, and attended the University of California, Berkeley, and Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

[citation needed] During June 1980, Kinkade spent a summer traveling across the United States with his college friend James Gurney.

[citation needed] The success of the book resulted in both working for Ralph Bakshi Studios where they created background art for the 1983 animated feature movie Fire and Ice.

Rendered with idealistic values of American scene painting, his works often portray bucolic and idyllic settings, such as gardens, streams, stone cottages, lighthouses and Main Streets.

It typically featured a cottage or a house of such insistent coziness as to seem actually sinister, suggestive of a trap designed to attract Hansel and Gretel.

She saw "unsettling similarities" between the two painters and worried that Kinkade's treatment of the Sierra Nevada, The Mountains Declare His Glory, similarly ignored the tragedy of the forced dispersal of Yosemite's Sierra Miwok Indians during the Gold Rush, by including an imaginary Miwok camp as what he calls "an affirmation that man has his place, even in a setting touched by God's glory.

"[11] Mike McGee, director of the CSUF Grand Central Art Center at California State University, Fullerton, wrote of the Thomas Kinkade Heaven on Earth exhibition:[14] Looking just at the paintings themselves it is obvious that they are technically competent.

Kinkade's genius, however, is in his capacity to identify and fulfill the needs and desires of his target audience—he cites his mother as a key influence and archetypal audience — and to couple this with savvy marketing ...

[16] Kinkade is reportedly one of the most counterfeited artists, in large part because of advances in affordable, high resolution digital photography and printing technology.

Licensing with Hallmark and other corporations has made it possible for Kinkade's images to be used extensively for other merchandise such as calendars, jigsaw puzzles, greeting cards, and CDs.

During June 2010, his Morgan Hill, California, manufacturing operation that reproduced the art filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, listing nearly $6.2 million in creditors' claims.

Some academics expressed concerns about the implications of Kinkade's success in relation to Western perceptions of visual art: in 2009, Nathan Rabin of The A.V.

Club wrote, "To his detractors, he represents the triumph of sub-mediocrity and the commercialization and homogenization of painting [...] perhaps no other painter has been as shameless or as successful at transforming himself into a corporation as Kinkade.

Rabin later described Kinkade's paintings collectively as "a maudlin, sickeningly sentimental vision of a world where everything is as soothing as a warm cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows on a cold December day".

In 2006, an arbitration board awarded Karen Hazlewood and Jeffrey Spinello $860,000 in damages and $1.2 million in fees and expenses due to Kinkade's company "[failing] to disclose material information" that would have discouraged them from investing in the gallery.

"[37] On June 2, 2010, Pacific Metro, the artist's production company, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, one day after defaulting on a $1 million court-imposed payment to the aforementioned Karen Hazlewood and Jeffrey Spinello.

[38] The Los Angeles Times reported that some of Kinkade's former colleagues, employees, and even collectors of his work said that he had a long history of cursing and heckling other artists and performers.

The Times further reported that he openly fondled a woman's breasts at a South Bend, Indiana, sales event, and alleged his proclivity for ritual territory marking by urination, once relieving himself on a Winnie the Pooh figure at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim while saying, "This one's for you, Walt.

"[39][40] In a letter to licensed gallery owners acknowledging he might have behaved badly during a stressful time when he overindulged in food and drink, Kinkade said accounts of the alcohol-related incidents included "exaggerated, and in some cases outright fabricated personal accusations".

[40] In 2006, John Dandois, Media Arts Group executive, recounted a story that on one occasion six years previously, Kinkade became drunk at a Siegfried & Roy magic show in Las Vegas and began shouting "Codpiece!

[39] Dandois also said of Kinkade, "Thom would be fine, he would be drinking, and then all of a sudden, you couldn't tell where the boundary was, and then he became very incoherent, and he would start cussing and doing a lot of weird stuff.

[43] In 2001, Media Arts unveiled "The Village at Hiddenbrooke," a Kinkade-themed community of homes, built outside of Vallejo, California, in partnership with the international construction company Taylor Woodrow.

Instead of quaint cottages, there's generic tract housing; instead of lush landscapes, concrete patios; instead of a cozy village, there's a bland collection of homes with nothing—not a church, not a cafe, not even a town square—to draw them together.

[45] In 2003, Kinkade was chosen as a National Spokesman for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and during the 20 Years of Light Tour in 2004, he raised more than $750,000 and granted 12 wishes for children with life-threatening medical conditions.

He was selected along with fellow artists Simon Bull and Howard Behrens to commemorate the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics and the 2002 World Series.

[43] In Heath and Potter's 2004 book The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can't Be Jammed, Kinkade's work is described as "so awful it must be seen to be believed".

[50] In Dana Spiotta's 2011 novel Stone Arabia, the main character's boyfriend, an art teacher at a private school in Los Angeles, gives Kinkade pieces, which are described as "deeply hideous" and "kitschy", to others as gifts, explaining his rationale for this by saying, "Well, he is America's most successful artist.

On the track "The Kids", Odenkirk includes Kinkade's paintings in a litany of things he encourages his children to appreciate when in reality he wants them to reject when they are older.

[58] In corroboration with the autopsy, according to Amy Pinto-Walsh, his girlfriend of 21 months, Kinkade had been at home drinking alcohol the night prior to his death.