Hasta La Ideas

The past year or two haven’t been so kind to Thomas “The Painter of Light” Kinkade and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. Following his being skewered by a batch of nogoodnik San Francisco artists and his much maligned licensing deal into pop-up Christmas trees (never mind that we were the chief maligners), the story from around this time last year, when Kinkade lost another appeal and was ordered by a judge, once again, to pay two gallery owners several million dollars for scamming them into buying his art, has returned full-force. Following continued battles in court, again with the artist losing, the LA Times reports that The Thomas Kinkade Company has filled for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which immediately puts a hold on paying out anything the company owes, like say, funds owed to people who have won lawsuits against it. Convenient that the day before the protect was filed was when Kinkade was expected to pay the next $1 million installment to the former gallery owners. Huh. Wonder if the two things might be related?

“Kinkade is a…deadbeat,” said their lawyer, Norman Yatooma, who accused the artist and his Los Angeles attorney, Dana Levitt, of “breaching their agreement” to pay up. “Kinkade’s word is as worthless as his artwork. His lawyer is no better.”

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