William Thomas Kinkade III (January 19, 1958 – April 6, 2012) 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 by means of the Thomas Kinkade Company. According to Kinkade's company, one in every twenty American homes owned a copy of one of his paintings. Kinkade described himself as a "Painter of Light", a phrase he protected by trademark, but which was earlier used to describe the English artist J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851). Kinkade was criticized for some of his behavior and business practices; art critics faulted his work for being "kitsch". Kinkade died of "acute intoxication" from alcohol and the drug diazepam at the age of 54. Early life and education William Thomas Kinkade was born on January 19, 1958, in Sacramento County, California. He grew up in the town of Placerville, graduated from El Dorado High School in 1976, and attended the University of California, Berkeley, and Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Some of the people who mentored and taught Kinkade prior to college were Charles Bell and Glenn Wessels. Wessels encouraged Kinkade to go to the University of California at Berkeley. Kinkade's relationship with Wessels is the subject of a semi-autobiographical movie released during 2008, Christmas Cottage. After two years of general education at Berkeley, Kinkade transferred to the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Career During June 1980, Kinkade spent a summer traveling across the United States with his college friend James Gurney. The two of them finished their journey in New York and secured a contract with Guptill Publications to produce a sketching handbook. Two years later they produced a book, The Artist's Guide to Sketching, which was one of Guptill Publications' best-sellers that year. The success of the book resulted in both working for Ralph Bakshi Studios where they created background art for the 1983 animated feature movie Fire and Ice. While working on the movie, Kinkade began to explore the depiction of light and of imagined worlds. After the movie, Kinkade worked as a painter, selling his originals in galleries throughout California. Artistic themes and style Recurring features of Kinkade's paintings are their glowing colors and pastel colors. Rendered with idealistic values of American scene painting, his works often portray bucolic and idyllic settings