Artist. Called the “Painter of Light”, he created a large body of popular and best-selling works that often depicted idyllic pastoral themes. Raised in Placerville, California, at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, he studied at the University of California, Berkeley, before transferring to Pasadena’s famed Art Center College of Design. He was to spend the 1980s traveling and refining his craft, along the way publishing 1982’s “The Artist’s Guide to Sketching” and producing the background scenes for the 1983 film “Fire and Ice”, and gradually began marketing his pictures which were characterized by the instantly recognizable “Kinkade glow”. His originals were sold in an ever expanding string of galleries as were prints, calendars, puzzles, greeting cards, coffee cups, and other items, his pieces often showing Placerville and having a religious subject. Not universally admired by professional critics he remained popular with the general public, and while he was sometimes taken to task for not having people in his pictures he did depict a soldier returning home for the USO and showed Dale Earnhardt in a 2008 commemoration of the 50th. running of the Daytona 500. He was also to memorialize the 2002 all-California World Series and the 2008 final season of the original Yankee Stadium; though his final years were marred by legal difficulties he received honors from the Make-a-Wish Foundation and other groups while continuing to see large sales of his work. Kinkade died suddenly at his home. (bio by: Bob Hufford)  Family links:  Parents:  William Thomas Kinkade (1918 – 2001)  Sibling:  William Thomas Kinkade (1958 – 2012)*  Thomas Kinkade (1958 – 2012) *Calculated relationship