Future Clouded for 'Painter of Light's' Galleries

His works, he says in a video playing on his company Web site, "are messengers."

"They go into the home," the artist continues, "and day in and day out they share that message silently with people who maybe need a little inspiration, a little light in their life."

Something in this speaks profoundly to great multitudes, judging by the sales racked up over the years by Media Arts Group, the San Jose-area merchandising firm of which Kinkade is the largest shareholder and more or less the sole asset.

But Kinkade and Media Arts have not been speaking much lately to people like Larry DiGiovanni. "We've asked them a number of times for help," DiGiovanni says, "and they've turned a deaf ear."

DiGiovanni is the owner of a string of Kinkade galleries in the Minneapolis area that are in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. The former defense company executive, who says he was led to believe he could match his $225,000 salary by becoming a Kinkade dealer, is facing the loss of his life savings.

The story he tells of his venture with the Painter of Light is mirrored by legal complaints coming in from many other corners of the nation that Kinkade and Media Arts have systematically defrauded their dealers, sucked them financially dry and reduced many to ruin.

This column is not the best place to debate the artistic stature of Thomas Kinkade. Suffice it to say that he does not exemplify the school that deems it art's purpose to evoke what Aristotle termed "pity and terror" in the viewer. The Kinkade school, rather, regards art as a sedative. His subjects tend toward cozy cottages in floral bowers, Elysian gardens and cityscapes at dusk. It's probably no accident that the hushed atmosphere of the typical "Signature Gallery" suggests not an art museum suffused with natural light but a mortuary.

Still, there's no point in pretending this isn't a remarkable venture. Many California entrepreneurs, especially during the heyday of high tech, turned moneymaking into an art; for his part, Kinkade figured out how to turn art into money.