Too late, far too late, for me to reach the pinnacle of glory as ‘Painter of Light’. That title’s already taken by Thomas Kinkade. Instead, I declare myself as the Anti-Kinkade, Nancy Green– Painter of Blight. I like blight better, anyway. It has poignance and complexity.
The Washington Post reports that Thomas Kinkade is in financial trouble, or Thos. Kinkade Inc. Sued by some gallery owners who took it on faith that they’d get paid and are unwilling to forgive. Not very Christian of them.
If it were up to me, I’d revoke his artistic license. He paints really pretty, I’ll give him credit for that. But scamming people into thinking his mass-produced images have any worth beyond the pleasure of seeing them on the wall is just greedy. He didn’t have to string so many people along.
Joe Carter, on the Catholic site, First Things, compares the Painter of Light to a younger, hungrier, more edgy painter– named Thomas Kinkade.
In related news, Celebration, Florida has seen two violent deaths in one week. This would be sad and frightening anywhere, but is a shock for Celebration, a world unto itself created by Disney Corp. to deliver the virtual small-town experience to a select population that has the credentials to get inside the gates. Celebration is much more sucessfully Kinkade than Kinkade’s own branded housing development, The Village at Hiddenbrooke, which is a pretty ordinary California suburban plat. It does have a brooke, also known as a ‘water feature’. Don’t want too much nature– breeds mosquitos.
A picket fence can’t keep out human nature. You can build a dream home, but real people will live in it. A lot goes on behind those glowing windows.
If you are a fan of the desolate beauty of the urban center, check out Mark Freedman. He lives and paints in Providence. I worship the turps he cleans his brushes in. a gallery owner on Wickenden St. often shows his paintings. I mentioned that Mark did some fine paintings on tar paper. He said, “Mark will paint on anything that’s flat.”
When the Rapture comes, I hope the faithful will get to take their Kinkades, and Mark Freedman’s paintings will be Left Behind. But the people who buy them will probably stay here too. Maybe I’ll save up for one of Mark’s smaller works.
Kmareka.com 
Kinkade is a ripoff,although his stuff would be great on greeting cards.
Now,you amaze me.You are exactly right about human nature and the fact that wealth and comfort don’t prevent really bad stuff from going on.
However,you seem to think that human nature can be changed.It can’t.Some people will always succumb to evil intentions,and others will just do something really horrible without any forethought-from rage or lack of affect,or whatever.
Your demonstrations for peace in a world constantly at war throughout history is a waste of time.Sorry to say that(really)but you kind of answered the question for me.
Mankind is not essentially generous and altruistic.Some people like to call it original sin-I say it is the imperfections we all carry-some of us do a better job of not letting it get out of hand than others.
Hard to say why.
I think that most of us follow the path of least resistance. I don’t mean that as criticism either, usually that’s the first path to try.
When conditions make it easier to use cooperation to get by, few people will choose conflict. But when greed is rewarded and the chance to earn an honest living is out of reach there’s trouble.
That’s why it’s in my self-interest to work for justice and peace.
Actually,some of the most vicious wars in history and today were and are motivated by ethnic/religious/national rivalries not particularly involving greed per se.
Just think of the Third Balkan War of the 90’s or the Mideast conflict.
Hard to find the economic driver for those.Okay,maybe oil played a large role in both conflicts we were engaged in with Iraq,but other wars there are essentially religious/ethnic.The Lebanese civil war and the Arab-Israeli Wars,and the Iran-Iraq War.
How about Sri Lanka or the Indo-Pakistani Wars?
Think about it.
Probably the Thirty Years War is the starting point for this in modern history.
Artist Lily Sparks take Kinkade to the next level in her work…
You know, I thought that being a nurse had made me blase about a lot of things. But a nude sleeping angel Thomas Kinkade will haunt me.
Don’t watch this video, Kmareka readers, unless you are prepared to face the unspeakable.
Nancy’s images are much more interesting than the “paint by numbers” of Mr. Kinkade–where is that remarkable church and who owns it? I think “getting by” is all that most people, without wealth or influence, is enviable after all. In the “getting by” we usually don’t intrude, abuse or do harm to most of the rest of the world, also getting by. Did not Jesus and Rabbi Akiba say something like this in their shared idea of “do unto others…”
The history of war is I suggest a bit more complex than has been stated here, and is probably as complicated as people have been throughout time. It is likely that technology of the timehas been the mechansim of destruction, more than ideology or other factors: economics, competition, resource availability, etc. The ideology may be the proposed motive, but is is the technology that is the mechanism.
Nancy’s stuff is certainly better than Kinkade’s.
Industrial scenery is a great artistic resource.
A lot of artists who made Pennsylvania their canvas have realized this.
The church is in Olneyville, a mill neighborhood in the industrial section of Providence. Olneyville has a fascinating history and presently is a kind of arts incubator.
The church was stripped of its ivy, someone is planning renovations I guess. It’s a nice building, don’t know who owns it, but it looks in line to be converted to some other use.
An arts incubator=upcoming mass relocation of the poorer residents.Gentrification creates a LOT of resentment.Pawtucket has a better situation because the arts district there doesn’t impinge too much on local residents already in place.
so far, Olneyville is not looking gentrified. some of the arts action is in industrial spaces like the Steelyard.
War is a phenomenon of agriculture, and was invented in the Neolithic period. Hunter/ gatherer, or even horticultural societies do not generally engage in warfare.
For example, there was really nothing analogous to war in pre-contact North America, where agriculture had never truly developed. The Iroquois, or the Chippewa did practice horticulture, but this does not entail the permanent attachment to specific territories.
Agriculute was, however, practiced in Mexico.
This is why the Europeans had a distinct advantage over the inhabitants of North America. Europeans had a very clear concept of war and conquest for the purpose of economic gain; the pre-existing populations did not.
As for the so-called Religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, religion was a stand-in for political hegemony. “The Reformation was not soley, or even primarily, a religious event.”
If the 30 Years War were truly a religious event, you would not have seen Catholic France allied with Protestant Germany fighting against Catholic Austria.
IMHO, WWII could very easily be called a religious war. Except we’ve replaced ‘religion’ with economic ideology. But, really, they’re the same thing.
As for the Balkans, the difference between a Serb and a Croat is, largely, the former are Orthodox and the latter are Catholics. But the conflict was about whether the Serbs, who had been dominant economically for centuries, would remain so, or whether the mosaic that was called Yugoslavia would fragment politically into its component pieces–Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim–so that each could pursue their own political and economic ends, or whether the Serbs would continue to call the shots.
As for the Mid East…look at the Israeli (NOT the Jewish) policies of not allowing the Palestinians (NOT the Muslims) to participate fully in the economy. Then tell me it’s not about economics.
No, war isn’t exclusively about economics. Economics is not a sufficient condition for war, but it’s a necessary one.
Look at the themes of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” worked. It claimed that Jews had an unholy monopoly on economic power. This made it easy to villify and turn them into an enemy lurking inside the gates, which is exactly what the Nazis did. But the Jews’ crime was economic.
And, interestingly, this is pretty much what Glenn Beck is saying–at length–about George Soros. By claiming that Soros has a dark control of financial levers, Beck is simply perpetuating the fiction of “The Protocols.”
…the more things change, the more they remain the same…
And, BTW, “The Protocols” were written by the Czarist secret police to make Jews suspect, which gave the czars political cover for expropriating the wealth of Jews.
I finished a history major in addition to the field I received my degree in.i have also donre a lot of reading in my lifetime,despite what you may think.
George Soros is a currency manipulator and I don’t find his activities that secretive-he practically rags about it.
Ask Maylaysians what he did to their cureency and the results.
That aside,I didn’t say economics had NO relation to war,but that wars can have other overriding causes.
The Serbs and Croats share a common language,but the Croats use the Latin alphabet and the Serbs the Cyrillic one.
Now,that is not an economic issue.
I had a lot of experience with Kosovo nationalists in the early 80’s and the whole situation there revolved around the refusal of the Serbs’ refusal to consider withdrawing from the site of their national martyrdom centuries ago.A lot of non-economic emotional/nationalistic fervor exists in that part of the world.
How about the Crusades.The Middle East was a religious objective,hardly the repository of any supposed riches,it being in the pre-oil era.
Try reading Balkan Ghosts by Robert Kaplan.
I’m not denying the importance eof economics as a moving force,but it’s far from the whole story.
Incidentally,the Rwanda conflict,which looked at first glance to be tribal/ethnic,was in fact economic,based on the long term preferential treatment of Tutsis by the Belgians(the most miserable colonists in history)at the expense of the Hutus.
I gotta type slower.
All Hail the Painter of Blight! Your stuff is fascinating, Nancy. You should friend Lori Bradley on FB if you haven’t already — she is doing a series of photographs on Buttonwoods Park…really interesting in their realism and yet she does some color manipulation stuff that gives it a Tolkeinesque feeling, as Kathryn Kulpa commented.
Nancy-the Steelyard really isn’t Olneyville,but I get your point-that’s a great location,and for that matter the entire Harris Ave.area.I don’t know what one would call that area.
BTW that area is nice on a Sunday morning-very deserted and with that good old time industrial architecture.