Thomas Kinkade

It feels like the kind of Christmas miracle depicted in a Thomas Kinkade painting. The tangled legal battle over Kinkade's estate, which pitted the late artist's girlfriend against his estranged wife, has been settled out of court. The San Jose Mercury News reported that the parties have reached a "secret settlement. "  Lawyers for Nanette Kinkade and Amy Pinto released a statement: "Putting Mr. Kinkade's message of love, spirituality, and optimism at the forefront, the parties are pleased that they have honored Mr. Kinkade by resolving their differences amicably.

It feels like the kind of Christmas miracle depicted in a Thomas Kinkade painting. The tangled legal battle over Kinkade's estate, which pitted the late artist's girlfriend against his estranged wife, has been settled out of court. The San Jose Mercury News reported that the parties have reached a "secret settlement. "  Lawyers for Nanette Kinkade and Amy Pinto released a statement: "Putting Mr. Kinkade's message of love, spirituality, and optimism at the forefront, the parties are pleased that they have honored Mr. Kinkade by resolving their differences amicably.

Thomas Kinkade, the popular painter who died in April at age 54, was killed by an accidental overdose of alcohol and Valium, according to the medical examiner of Santa Clara County, Calif. The autopsy report of the artist, which  was released Monday, stated that Kinkade died of "acute ethanol and Diazepam intoxication" and that the death was accidental. Diazepam is an anti-anxiety drug that is found in prescription Valium. Kinkade died April 6 at his home in Monte Sereno, a community near Los Gatos in the Bay Area.

Behind many notable television careers is a theater background, and Sherman Hemsley, who died this week at 74, was no exception. The star of the long-running CBS sitcom "The Jeffersons," Hemsley got his start on the stage, including studying at the Negro Ensemble Co. in New York. Hemsley appeared in a number of New York stage productions with the ensemble, where he studied under Lloyd Richards. The actors performed with the Urban Arts Corps, another New York company, and in various off-Broadway and regional shows.

The death of Thomas Kinkade earlier this month at the age of 54 left behind many unanswered questions. Now comes a report of a brewing legal skirmish between the popular artist's wife and his girlfriend. The Los Gatos Patch in Santa Clara, Calif., recently reported that Kinkade's wife, Nanette, has filed a restraining order against the artist's live-in girlfriend, Amy Pinto-Walsh. Kinkade was separated from his wife at the time of his death and was apparently living with Pinto-Walsh.

More popular than the Egg McMuffin, more colorful than a pack of Skittles, the inspirational renderings of trademarked "Painter of Light" Thomas Kinkade have captured the hearts, minds and wall space of millions. Alas, Kinkade doesn't part with originals. (The faithful can purchase lithographs transferred to canvas and "enhanced" with oil paint to the tune of $660 to $10,870.

The quiet lanes and gentle vistas of Thomas Kinkade's paintings beguile the faithful. Reproduced on calendars and coffee cups, in prints and on wallpaper, it's a gauzy, weightless world in which time stands still. Admirers react with awe. Critics call it awful. In the sunbaked hills of a former ranch 30 miles northeast of San Francisco, families with at least $400,000 to spend on Kinkade's vision will call it home.

Thomas Kinkade is famous for his luminous landscapes and street scenes, those dreamy, deliberately inspirational images he says have brought "God's light" into people's lives, even as they have made him one of America's most collected artists. A devout Christian who calls himself the "Painter of Light," Kinkade trades heavily on his beliefs and says God has guided his brush -- and his life -- for the last 20 years.

Jeffrey VALLANCE, a respected contemporary artist with a teaching position at UCLA and 2004 Guggenheim Fellowship, smiles broadly as he explains how he happened to organize an exhibition of work by commercial artist Thomas Kinkade, the self-described "Painter of Light." "I got intrigued by the idea that there are different art worlds," Vallance says. "The fine-art world does not want to touch Kinkade. They see what he does as not art.

Fans of Thomas Kinkade's sentimental paintings soon will be able to do more than hang them on the wall. They could hang them on the wall of a house designed to look like one of his popular paintings. The California artist, beloved by middlebrow America but reviled by the art establishment, has signed a deal with developers in this resort city to help design five lake-view houses that are copies of homes in paintings such as "Beyond Autumn Gate."

SAN JOSE - Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light™, spent his last two years legally separated from his wife of nearly three decades and struggling with alcoholism. Now, the $60-million-plus estate of America's most collected artist - master of the prayer garden and the glowing cottage - is at the center of a nasty legal battle complete with two wills, two women and two very different images of the painter's last wishes. Nanette Kinkade, his estranged wife, and Amy Pinto, who says she and Kinkade were planning a Fiji wedding before his death at age 54, are locked in a dispute over the disposition of his fortune - as well as his remains.

The legal battle over the estate of Thomas Kinkade received a hearing earlier this week in a court in San Jose, with the artist's estranged wife squaring off against Kinkade's girlfriend, who was living with him at the time of his death in April. The hearing was held to decide whether the estate fight will be held in open court or in private arbitration. Amy Pinto-Walsh, the artist's girlfriend, has submitted to the court a handwritten document that she says shows Kinkade bequeathed her his mansion and $10 million to establish a Thomas Kinkade Museum, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

If one were to flay a wayward Muppet - perish the thought! - one might end up with something like an Anna Betbeze painting. Ragged and furtively riddled with holes, her large, shaggy expanses of woven wool are distressed and stained in myriad colors from earthy to acid. The four works on view at François Ghebaly are beguiling, not only because they evoke monsters and shag carpeting, but because they so thoroughly fuse the grotesque with the Arcadian. A circle of mottled rust and green shag ringed in an almost-sunny yellow, “Sunspot” is a much more tactile version of the cosmic phenomenon suggested by its title; it also resembles a gangly, hirsute sunflower.

Thomas Kinkade, the popular painter who died in April at age 54, was killed by an accidental overdose of alcohol and Valium, according to the medical examiner of Santa Clara County, Calif. The autopsy report of the artist, which  was released Monday, stated that Kinkade died of "acute ethanol and Diazepam intoxication" and that the death was accidental. Diazepam is an anti-anxiety drug that is found in prescription Valium. Kinkade died April 6 at his home in Monte Sereno, a community near Los Gatos in the Bay Area.

NEW YORK -- The old "contents may have shifted during flight" warning seemed especially worrying for "One Man, Two Guvnors," the London smash from the National Theatre of Great Britain that opened last week on Broadway.   Although the play by Richard Bean is a freehand adaptation of Carlo Goldoni's 18th century classic "The Servant of Two Masters," a commedia-dell'arte-inspired romp with timeless bona fides, not everyone was certain whether the production's British humor style would tickle American audiences. Well, to go by the gales of laughter pouring out of the Music Box Theatre on West 45th Street, the gags, jokes and pratfalls, under the unerring direction of Nicholas Hytner (with assistance from "physical comedy director" Cal McCrystal)

The death of Thomas Kinkade earlier this month at the age of 54 left behind many unanswered questions. Now comes a report of a brewing legal skirmish between the popular artist's wife and his girlfriend. The Los Gatos Patch in Santa Clara, Calif., recently reported that Kinkade's wife, Nanette, has filed a restraining order against the artist's live-in girlfriend, Amy Pinto-Walsh. Kinkade was separated from his wife at the time of his death and was apparently living with Pinto-Walsh.

In a painter's life, it is generally the case that success is the worst thing of all. --Vincent van Gogh, who never realized commercial success in his life yet agonized over its possibilities, wrote those words in a letter to his mother in 1890. It's a good thing van Gogh isn't around to see Thomas Kinkade's success; it would render him speechless. Kinkade, 42, who has been dubbed "the painter of light," is everywhere.

A Michigan judge Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit accusing an attorney of illegal eavesdropping while representing former art gallery owners in a dispute with painter Thomas Kinkade and his California company. Filed in March by Thomas Kinkade Co. of Morgan Hill, Calif., the lawsuit alleged that attorney Joseph Ejbeh improperly transmitted over the Internet a live feed of arbitration testimony to Terry Sheppard, a witness in the case last year.

Thomas Kinkade, the self-styled "Painter of Light" who died Friday at 54, once said he worked to "create images that project a serene simplicity. " But despite his astonishing commercial success with luminous seascapes and paintings of cottages and street scenes, Kinkade's life in many ways was neither serene nor simple. Millions of his paintings and prints hang in homes around the world, popularity that translated to more than $50 million in earnings for the artist from 1997 to 2005 alone.

One of Thomas Kinkade's companies filed for bankruptcy protection Wednesday, a day after a $1-million payment was due to former gallery owners who have tried for four years to collect on a judgment they won against the self-styled "painter of light." The Chapter 11 petition was filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Jose in the name of the Kinkade production arm, Pacific Metro of Morgan Hill, Calif. It allows Pacific Metro to reorganize and puts an automatic stay on the collection of all judgments, including one for $3 million owed to Karen Hazlewood and Jeff Spinello.