Thomas Kinkade on the hook for $2.1 million

Maybe you've never heard of Thomas Kinkade, "painter of light" and schlocky wall paintings that make middle aged Baptists believe they have taste, who is a self proclaimed born-again Christian who uses religious themes in his art and his marketing, and once said that "God became my art agent" after his conversion....

Well guess who stole and ruined and lied to his business partners, and then swooped in and bought them all out at a massive loss to the investors? Yeah, it's the kind of thing Christ would have done.

Kinkade and other company officials used terms like "partner," "trust," "Christian" and "God" to create "a certain religious environment designed to instill a special relationship of trust" to the tune os $860,000 in damages to the former gallery owners, Karen Hazlewood and Jeff Spinello, and more than $1.2 million in attorneys' fees and arbitration expenses.

Here's how it went down. What Kinkade's company didn't tell them, (said their attorney) was that they would have to sell Kinkade's works at minimum retail prices while the artist undercut them with discount sales, some of which he made himself on cable television.

The value of their galleries were undercut, and closed in 2003. Here's the best part...

It was all part of a plan, (the gallery owners claimed) to lower the value of the publicly traded company before Kinkade bought it in 2004, at steep losses to many investors.

This is all according the San Francisco Chronicle, (Link)

The award by the arbitration judge won't put Kinkade out of business, but hopefully his fraudulent and shady business practices will. I would think that as word of his hypocrisy of specifically hiding behind religion to dupe his customers and business partners as a good Christian, that he'll soon be out of work. I would think that as more people who hear about this, the less likely his work will be seen... except for lining the walls of the Goodwill and Salvation Army. Spread the word.

And is that a stream of urine coming from that house, or is it gold? Just wondering.