A painting from one of Thomas Kinkade’s puzzles. Sadly, the artist died in 2012 at the young age of 54.
“You can’t open a book without learning something.” – Confucius
You Never Know When You Will Find One
I was coming back from a weekend spent camping at Roosevelt Lake with my friend, Jean, when she suggested we stop at the Golden Goose in the small town of Catalina just north of Tucson.
“What’s the Golden Goose?” I asked.
“A thrift shop,” she answered. And so we stopped.
As always, I headed to the used book section to look for a treasure.
What I found was a travel book called “Chasing the Horizon” with words by Patrick Kinkade and art by his brother Thomas, whose serenely stunning art has been the subject of many 1,000-piece puzzle I have put together.
I bought the book, which had been published in 1997, and put it on my bookshelf, where it sat for over a year. About a week ago, it hit the top of my reading list. The book is about a trip the brothers took with their Dad through the British Isles and France.
Reading it gave me a startling new view of the prolific artist whose works dubbed him the Painter of Light. Thomas’s paintings mostly depict idealistic
American landscapes with gardens, stone cottages, light houses pastoral steams. Because of his art, I stereotyped him as a quiet, gentle man who probably saw the world through rose-colored glasses.
Instead I found two rowdy brothers who loved to pull pranks and often ignored rules. The trip was mostly to cover the same ground their father had when he served during World War II and ended up in Normandy. The book let me see the same territory through the eyes of an observant writer, an idealistic artist, and a Dad, who had wanderlust in his soul – just like me.
While once again the book reminded me that stereotyping seldom works, it also reminded me that treasures aren’t all that hard to find.
Blog pick of the Day. Check it out.
Bean Pat: Light and Fluffy http://tinyurl.com/javnu3h Those who turn clouds into castles and dragons, or alligators and cats, should get a laugh out of this. I did.
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