No artist seemed to evoke as much revulsion in my mother, Jackie, as did Thomas Kinkade, the self-appointed “Master of Light”. This revulsion has been passed on to my son, Dan. Me, I can take him or leave him. Maybe because I only became aware of him after he had passed and by that time. Kinkade was an American painter of popular realistic, pastoral, and idyllic subjects. He is notable for achieving success during his lifetime with the mass marketing of his work as printed reproductions and other licensed products. There is a store in Monterey that sells his work. I thought that it had gone out of business, but on my last visit there, I found it again. I guess that I can’t get all worked up about him is because when I first saw his work, he had taken to putting Disney cartoon characters into his paintings. I can’t think of anything less artistically serious than that.