"I don’t own any of his paintings, nor am I drawn to them. Yet, I can see that someone could find in them a small respite from the common driving life. I won’t begrudge anyone that."

This article in a 2009 issue of First Things on the art (or "art," if you're a snob about it) of Thomas Kinkade was fascinating to me, and the comments are quite interesting, too. Very interesting and enlightening back and forth about popular art.

Before I read this article I had never seen Kinkade's earlier work, and it seems that it is exactly the kind of art I love, very evocative of a specific time and place. Later he learned how to create pictures that are evocative of a time and place that have never existed, and that appeals to other people.