With the death of Thomas Kinkade, the stories and scandals surrounding the artist are unavoidable As with any public figure, all eyes are trained on the lone personality in the spotlight, the one who stands center stage.

In a way, we as a society secretly wish for public figures to stumble or fall. We delight in scandals. We gasp in mock horror when tales of infidelity or other stories of excess are cracked wide open, scrambling our preconceived notions of what our artistic heroes are or should be. Jealousy fans the flames of fallen fame.

Darkness is the underbelly of light. Most would say the opposite, and one cannot exist without the other. To get light, we must have darkness; without bad, there cannot be good. But, rather than standing in opposition, it’s more of a continuum, a spectrum.

Kinkade is not the first artist, nor will he be the last, to channel darkness and turn it into light. Demons of addiction or mental illness torment many artists whether painter or poet, writer or renaissance person. Many artists eventually succumb to their afflictions, drowning in alcohol or drugs, or surrendering to the darkness, allowing it to overtake and consume them.

But here’s the thing:
Tapping into the darkness and bringing forth hidden thoughts, impulses and secrets into the light, is a difficult talent. It’s not for the faint of heart. It’s frightening. So frightening, in fact, the average person either cannot or will not do it. It takes an artist to skillfully convert the darkness, or at the very least, express it in a way that makes the viewer think or feel at the most primal level.

Darkness can be harnessed and tamed, sublimated to the background, yet hovering just below the surface. This creates shadows, captured darkness that undergoes a metamorphosis, creating a surreal sensory experience.

Vincent van Gogh is the artist who comes to mind when ruminating upon the play of light and dark, a tortured soul. This is the artist who battled the demons of depression for years to transform his darkness into beauty. His Starry Night is luminosity within the darkness. For no matter how dark it gets, there is always light waiting on the other side. His Starry Night Over The Rhone reflects the light upon the still, dark waters.

Light is always there, no matter how faint or scattered, to shine its brilliance upon a soul.

At only 54 years old the self-proclaimed “Painter of Light®,” Thomas Kinkade, was found dead in his California home on April 6.

From his copyrighted tag, “The Painter of Light®” to his mission statement, Kinkade combined a talent of universal enchantment with savvy business acumen.

With over 1,000 works, Kinkade was a prolific genius who captured the zeitgeist of the public. By marketing to his audience with reproduction prints and other licensed products (calendars, greeting cards, etc.), Kinkade reached millions of people who might not otherwise have any interest in art. His paintings are said to hang in 1 out of 20 homes, proof of his mass appeal and marketing genius.

Kinkade’s works include an array of subjects: bucolic cabins, nature scenes, lush gardens, classic cottages, inspirational scenes, lighthouses, stunning seascapes and classic Americana. The play of glowing highlights, color and shadow lends a spiritual feeling to his paintings.

Kinkade’s hallmark use of capturing light and magnifying it onto the canvas seems to have been directly influenced by J.M.W. Turner. This influence even extends to his moniker.  Joseph Mallord William Turner (J.M.W. Turner)  (23 April 1775 – 19 December 1851) has been referred to as a painter of light (the original). Renowned for his oils, Turner is also famous for his watercolor landscapes and a precursor to Impressionism.

Nature was most often Turner’s subjects, including the grandeur along with her violence. Shipwrecks and natural catastrophes were captured along with storms and sunlight. His use of light in his work was, to him, the manifestation of God’s spirit. This seems, also, what Kinkade’s ultimate goal: to capture spirit.

In Turner’s landscapes and seascapes, the sparkle of light on water and the radiance of sky was ephemeral and hypnotic. In some of his earliest works, such as 1795’s Tintern Abbey, traditional English landscape technique can be seen. Open sky peeking through soaring archways, as light breaks through the heavens to earth is a glimpse of grandeur, a subtle reflection of spirit.

Turner’s later works such as The Bay of Baiae with Apollo and the Sibyl (1823)  and The Devil’s Bridge Saint Godard (1841) concentrated less on objects and more on nature. Showcasing spirituality in his paintings was of paramount importance – much like Kinkade.

Perhaps for Thomas Kinkade, his ability to bring joy to people was his primary purpose and his ultimate gift.

From Kinkade’s official website:
“My mission as an artist is to capture those special moments in life adorned with beauty and light. I work to create images that project a serene simplicity that can be appreciated and enjoyed by everyone. That’s what I mean about sharing the light.”
For critics, Kinkades’s body of work was no more than kitsch.

For fans, his paintings were a slice of heaven and a glimpse of the American dream.
In today’s world, is it really such a bad thing to create works of art that easily tap the imagination and speak to the soul?

A planned art theft made by the book. One or more thieves on the second week of the year stole three paintings from the National Greek Gallery in Athens. The entire heist took about seven minutes, according to police.

One of the artworks was made by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, “Woman’s Head,” a 1930s cubist bust painting. The art had been donated by the artist himself to the Greek people in 1949, as an honorary offer for its brave resistance during the Nazi occupation, in the context of the donation of French artists’ works.

Besides Picasso’s painting, the thieves also stole Piet Mondrian’s “Mill,” a 1905 oil canvas of a riverside scene and windmill. The Dutch painter made the artwork in 1905, and had been hanging on The National Greek Gallery wall since 1963, by the donation of Alexander Pappas.

The third art work now in the hands of the thieves is a pen-and-ink sketch of St. Diego de Alcala in ecstasy with Holy Trinity and the symbols of passion, made in the 16th century by the Italian artist Guglielmo Caccia. The work had been donated to the National Gallery by Gregory Maraslis in 1907.

The thieves got into the Museum by an ingenious plan: At the beginning of that evening, the robbers intentionally set off the gallery’s alarm system several times without entering the building. Police stated that the security staffers on duty investigated and found no disturbances. In consequence, they disabled one of the alarms. The burglars then entered through a balcony door uninterrupted!

However, their plan was compromised by one of the motion sensors in the exhibition area. It was 4:30 in the morning, local time. At that moment, one of the guards just arrived in time to see one of the suspects fleeing. If he hadn’t been there, the thieves could have also gone with another 1905 Mondrian work. The painting depicting a typical farm had been abandoned by the robbers at the guardian’s arrival!

The National Greek Gallery hadn’t made an estimation of the art works valued yet. Furthermore, the thieves had not been apprehended as of now. Several investigations are being carried out to identify and arrest the offenders. Another investigation is being conducted by the Attica Security Division. In addition, international searches which have been issued in order to trace the paintings.

This theft is only one in a long line of Picasso related burglaries done in the last decade, and the Picasso stolen now, “Woman’s Head,” joins a long list of Picasso’s that still remain at large. For example “The Dance,” disappeared on February 24th, 2006, from the Museu da Chacara do Ceu in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and “The Pigeon with Green Peas,” stolen from the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris last year, on May 20th 2011.

Moreover, in 2011, art thieves destroyed a Picasso that was estimated at $100 million. The works (by Picasso, Matisse and Modigliani) that were stolen last year from a museum in Paris were thrown in the garbage and probably crushed by a rubbish truck.

Here is a list of the top 10 artists with most works stolen, Picasso leads the bunch by a considerable margin:

1. Pablo Picasso – 1,147
2. Nick Lawrence – 557
3. Marc Chagall – 516
4. Karel Appel – 505
5. Salvador Dali – 505
6. Joan Miro – 478
7. David Levine – 343
8. Andy Warhol – 343
9. Rembrandt – 337
10. Peter Reinicke – 336

The online art gallery overstockArt.com, published today its official Top 10 list of most romantic oil paintings for Valentine’s Day 2012. Topping the chart for the second year in a row is Gustav Klimt’s sensual masterpiece “The Kiss.” Other artists named on the 2012 Valentine’s Day Top 10 Romantic Oil Paintings list include Marc Chagall, Salvador Dali, Paul Gauguin, Edward Hopper, Pablo Picasso, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

The Top 10 Romantic Oil Paintings according to overstockArt.com’s statistics are:

1. “The Kiss,” Gustav Klimt
2. “Hand with Bouquet,” Pablo Picasso
3. “Summer Evening,” Edward Hopper
4. “The Equestrian,” Marc Chagall
5. “When Will you Marry?,” Paul Gauguin
6. “Dance in the City,” Pierre-Auguste Renoir
7. “Two Women Running on the Beach,” Pablo Picasso
8. “Boating on the Seine,” Pierre-Auguste Renoir
9. “Fulfillment (The Embrace),” Gustav Klimt
10. “The Meditative Rose,” Salvador Dali

More than 3,700,000 page views to overstockArt.com’s Romantic Art Gallery in the past year were tracked. According to the click tracking, “The Kiss,” was the most sought after painting clicked at nearly seven percent, and Pablo Picasso’s “Hand with Bouquet” came in second, garnering five percent of the clicks to grab.

Created during Klimt’s “Golden Period,” “The Kiss” is renowned because of its tender representation of two lovers intertwined into one being, symbolizing the strength of this bond. The opulent and sensuous images in the painting create a sense of decadence, which modern art lovers appreciate to this day. “The Kiss” has topped not only the Top 10 Romantic Oil Paintings for two consecutive years, but has been one of the top four paintings in overstockArt.com’s annual Top 10 Oil Paintings list for the past six years.

“Every February we see a large spike in the traffic visiting our Romantic Art Gallery. Last year, the two weeks leading to Valentine’s Day brought 50 percent of all annual traffic to the gallery,” said David Sasson, founder and president of overstockArt.com. “Valentine’s Day brings out the romantic in all of us and with sensuous paintings like ‘The Kiss’ and tender images such as ‘Hand with Bouquet’ – it’s easy to find a fine art piece that your loved one will treasure for a lifetime!”

Mark Rothko managed to make viewers burst with feelings just by looking at his simplistic illuminating bands. He didn’t care about the color theories, or what the critiques say about his images. He sought to bring out of the viewer’s soul emotions of fear, love or hate. It is said that there were people who actually cried just by looking at his color associations. Some may say that the artist’s powerful passions for his creation may have charged the works of art with the painter’s emotions.

So how did Rothko manage to bring such feelings to the people who viewed his paintings? In the countless letters, he wrote in his life, Mark Rothko reveals his secrets.

Rothko used the entire spectrum of color. However, he tented to a particular hue depending on the phase through which he passed in his life. For example, in the mid-1950s, he preferred bright reds and yellows instead of dark blues or greens, which he used towards the end of his life, when he was rather depressed. Rothko usually mixed his paints himself. On the untreated, unprimed canvas, he brushed a thin layer of binder into which color pigments had been added. He then fixed this foundation with oils, which he allowed to spread around the unframed edges of the painting. Over these, Rothko applied overlapping color mixtures. These mixtures were strongly tinned. This is why their pigmentation barely adhered to the surface of the picture. The procedure gave his paintings transparency and luminance. The technique continues with the applying of the color layers. Rothko used to lay on the pigments with very light and fast brush strokes, by imagining that the colors were inserted into the painting. Thus, he created a symmetrical underlining that offered him the possibility of juggling with colors. More to say, Rothko gave a dramatic air to his paintings by creating a tension of contrast. Therefore, the colors sustained each other just by their association, their effect on the viewer as by the tension of fixation, which Rothko described as tragic.

From 1949 to 1956, the artist painted almost exclusively in oils, using mostly vertical formats. The sizes of the canvases exceeded 10 Feet in height. Rothko explained his choice in large-format paintings by making the viewer to stand to a certain distance in order to feel inserted in the atmosphere. “I realize that historically the function of painting large pictures is painting something very grandiose and pompous. The reason I paint them, however – I think it applies to other painters I know – is precisely because I want to be very intimate and human. To paint a small picture is to place a stereopticon view or with a reduction glass. However, you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn’t something you command.” Rothko made his paintings in order to be viewed from a certain distance, 45 centimeters. In this way, the viewer would feel inserted in the fields of color, which gave him certain feelings, of anger or happiness. This is why some cry at the pure glimpse of a Rothko painting.

Tangerine Tango, Pantone’s 2012 Color of the Year, is the “spirited reddish orange” shade that will be brightening up cosmetics, fashion and home trends this year. Design Expert Dawn Kail of overstockArt.com advises that it’s easy to brighten up your home design with the color Pantone describes as being “reminiscent of the radiant shading of a sunset.”

“Decorating with vibrant shades of orange, like Tangerine Tango, adds a playful, lively energy to the home,” said Kail. “In feng shui, the color orange is often called the ‘social’ color and is used in areas of the home where you want energy that promotes lively conversations and good times.”

Kail advises to start small when decorating with such a vibrant color, “I wouldn’t advise you to repaint every wall in a room or purchase all new furniture in tangerine tango, use the color to accessorize and accent your home. Doing too much will leave your room looking like a pumpkin patch.”

Enliven your home decor with five decorating tips from Kail that make it easy to incorporate the color of the year into your look:

1. Color pairings – Traditionally an autumnal shade, Tangerine Tango can last all year when it is paired with popular neutral tones like white and gray. The reddish-orange color pairs well with other vivid shades of red, yellow and fuschia. You can also tone down the look by offsetting it with shades of mint and modern shades of blue. Add a sense of sophistication to your look by adding hints of gold.
2. Home décor – The easiest way to introduce the color of the year is with home accessories. Soft linens, like pillows, throws and bedding, in the bright orange shade will quickly add spice to a room. Vases, candleholder and even cabinet knobs and drawer pulls can be used to brighten neutral color schemes. Displaying vibrant pieces of art featuring the playful color quickly livens up a room. Either go with a piece that predominantly features the orange shades, like Paul Klee’s masterpiece “Head of Man.” Or display a piece with pops of the bright color, such as Gustav Klimt’s sensual painting “Water Serpents II.”
3. In the kitchen – For a dynamic burst of energy in the kitchen, incorporate Tangerine Tango colored appliances, like KitchenAid’s signature stand mixer in the hue. Add a bright splash of color to your walls and backsplashes with fine art. Hang a painting or try a textured ceramic art tile. Fine art trivet tiles featuring the shade, like Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Oriental Poppies,” can decorate your wall and your table.
4. Walls and windows – Brighten up your entryways, hallways and rooms by painting a wall in this vivacious orange. Or paint your front door in this welcoming shade. Wallpaper has returned, so why not add a punch of color to your walls with wallpaper that highlights this juicy hue. Or add a small burst of the brilliant shade to drapery panels and curtains.
5. Home furnishings – Add key pieces to a neutral room, like a vivid armchair or side table. In the bedroom, custom headboards in the bright shade or nightstands add a playful look.

“The orange color trend isn’t meant to dictate your home’s color scheme, it is more a directional suggestion,” said Kail. “All you have to do is add a splash of Tangerine Tango to add a fresh and fun spirit to the look of your home.”

See more of Kail’s suggestions for incorporating Tangerine Tango into your home on the overstockArt: Tangerine Tango Pinterest board.