Margaret Cabaniss, at insidecatholic.com, joins Vanity Fair's Paul Cullum in sniffing at the work of decorative painter Thomas Kinkade.
On the one hand, I have to admit his stuff is not great art. It's dreamy, nostalgic, sentimental, formulaic, and escapist. So what? It's decorative. On that score, at least it's better than a painting made of elephant droppings.
I'm not a fan of his works by any means, but it bothers me to see good writers fall into the snobbery attached to most criticism of Kinkade.
Vanity Fair and other elites would ignore Thomas Kinkade altogether but for one reason: he portrays Protestant Christian small-town America as a comforting milieu, whereas the elites insist that it was oppressive to the core.
