When Thomas Kinkade died in 2012, the “Painter of Light” was remembered as one of the most popular artists of the previous 25 years, but also as someone who never earned much respect from the mainstream art world. He even once bet journalist Susan Orlean $1 million that a major art museum would, within his lifetime, hold an exhibition of his work.
That was before he suffered a very public fall of grace that included the breakup of his marriage, the collapse of his company, and embarrassing reporting about multiple drunken incidents.
The new documentary Art For Everybody, now in theaters after a festival run that began in 2023, tells Kinkade’s entire story, using both archival footage and the cooperation of his ex-wife and four daughters. It even unearths some Kinkade art that had previously been unseen, which takes on a much darker cast than the cottages and lighthouses with which Kinkade had long been associated.
We spoke with Miranda Yousef, the film’s director, about Art For Everybody, what she learned and uncovered about Kinkade, and what there is to learn from his story.
First of all, I really enjoyed the film. I kept missing it at film festivals. It was at, I think I was covering either Sundance or South by Southwest virtually, and I wanted to see it then. I wasn’t able to. You were at the Philadelphia Film Festival, I think, in 2023. I missed it there as well, but I really was interested in this film, so I was happy to finally have the opportunity to see it in the last couple weeks, and you did a really great job, and congratulations.
Thank you.
I just wanted to know, first of all, you know, what was it that brought you to this project? When were you first aware of Thomas Kinkade’s work, and I guess his story, and what was it that led to you making a film about it?
Well, you know, when I was growing up, he was everywhere. He was in the ether, there were the stores. And I was kind of like aware, you know, in the mid-2000s when the business was having issues that we cover in the film, and then I also was aware when he died in 2012, but beyond that, I hadn’t really been sort of keeping up.
And then fast forward to the pandemic, my producing partner, Tim Rummel, and I had been looking for a project to do together for some time. And during the pandemic, we were talking with a friend of ours who’s a conceptual artist in the legit fine art world. And he said, you know, I hear that there might be something interesting about Thomas Kinkade. And my initial reaction was like, no, there isn’t because I was really familiar with, you know, the painter of light persona and all that stuff.
But Tim went ahead and looked into it and contacted the estate and they were like, well, yes, you know, we have like, in addition to these, like, you know, thousands of hours of archival footage and hundreds of hours of audio cassette tapes and thousands of photographs and thousands of artworks, we also have this vault. And then once we heard about the vault, we just all lit up and we’re like, yes, there is a story here.
So I know I talk to a lot of documentary filmmakers, and they’re dealing with the estate of someone who isn’t still alive, sometimes they’re not very cooperative, or they want to kind of guard the legacy of the person, I guess, you, it seems like you got along with the, I assume when you say the estate, that’s his wife and daughters?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So there’s a couple of things that really helped. One is that it had been almost 10 years since his passing, and I think that they were ready to tell the story. The other was that Tim and I were partnered with Morgan Neville, who I’m sure you’re aware directed the Mr. Rogers’ doc, and directed the Anthony Bourdain doc, and has a whole host of others that just demonstrate how thoughtful a filmmaker he is.
So we went to them, and I just was really honest. I was like, look, I’m not interested in making a puff piece. I’m also not interested in making a hatchet job. I want to try to find the truth of who this person really is. And I think that they heard that. And the other thing I would just add is, as you can see in the film, the persona that Kinkade created cast such a long shadow over the whole family, that their voices were just not ever heard. And I felt like this was an opportunity to… I could give them an opportunity to share, to hear their voices.
I’m curious about that. I know the company kind of collapsed when he was still alive. But what is the status of the Thomas Kinkade business? Is there a business entity that exists that sells his paintings and what is that like today?
Yeah, the Thomas Kinkade Studios, they actually have had a deal with Disney, like a kind of where they create Disney pictures in the style of Thomas Kinkade. So if you go into a gallery today, you can buy a picture of Baby Yoda in the style of Thomas.
Interesting.
Yeah.
And I guess Kinkade’s estate gets a piece of that?
Yeah, I guess so. Like, I’m not really sure about that…our story kind of our stopped, when he died in 2012 when he actually passed so I don’t really know.
So I guess kind of the big question that I had from this, which I know the film sort of explores is, how sincere was he in his persona? He’s talking about God, He’s talking about you know wanting to stand up for God and things like that. Was that an act? Was that you know sort of sincere and not sincere? Was he playing up what he thought would be good for business?
I think that he was sincere. Like he really kind of committed to whatever it was that he was doing. He was all in. So I think he was looking for help. That was one of the things that was really interesting was to learn about how after, you know, he sort of has this mental breakdown at Berkeley and then he goes and he like finds Jesus again. And I did think that was… my personal opinion is that he was looking for something to help ground himself.
I think that he did have that for a while. But I do think also that it was hard to keep that up. We all contain multitudes and, you know, and he couldn’t show any of those other ones.
So, I guess you personally, how much sympathy did you end up having for Thomas Kinkade? I guess, did you have more of it by the end of the project from when you started, or less?
No, I definitely did because, the only thing that I had known was the sort of what had been put forward. And I think that generally people, I don’t know if it’s specific to our culture or if it’s everywhere, but you know, people kind of want to make a snap judgment and put somebody in a box and it’s like, ‘Oh, he was like, on this part of the political spectrum, and therefore, you know, I do, or I don’t like him.’ And I feel like, he was this complex, larger-than-life figure, and ultimately he lived a Greek tragedy of a life. And I do find it to be tragic.
