Town Square 1986

Thomas Kinkade painted this Town Square with oils, probably sometime in the late twentieth or early twenty-first century. It's mostly oranges and browns, which are colors I understand, colors of the earth. And it’s very process oriented; you can see how the paint has been layered and blended. Looking at the surface, it feels pretty smooth, not too much thick impasto. I notice how the light seems to glow from within, especially in the sky. The texture almost seems to be built up, layer by layer, glazed and rubbed to get that luminescence. The bare branches of the trees reach up like veins against the orange sky. It reminds me a little bit of Edward Hopper’s paintings of small-town America. Ultimately, art is this conversation. It's a mix of memory, emotion, and visual play. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be honest.