Lingering Dusk 1983

Curator: Here we have Thomas Kinkade's "Lingering Dusk," painted in 1983. Immediately, what stands out to you? Editor: Oh, that golden light! It feels like someone bottled up the last rays of a sunset and spilled them right onto those snow-capped peaks. There's a cozy sort of stillness about it, even though it depicts a vast, wild landscape. Curator: Indeed. The landscape itself, its materiality, suggests a specific, constructed wilderness, appealing to particular audiences during the early 1980s. Think of the mass production and consumption of such imagery... it provided idealized, accessible landscapes in contrast to industrial realities. The labor to reproduce it, the materials—prints, canvases—they speak volumes. Editor: Makes me think about our collective longing for nature, even if it's a carefully curated version. It also reads as such a stark contrast with that little camp down by the stream. People clustered around a fire, in a clearing of tents – its almost primordial! Curator: Absolutely, and it invites a material analysis, doesn't it? The camp itself implies resource extraction, modification of landscape for shelter, for warmth. And the canvas itself; oil paint thickly applied creating an art object ready for commodification in galleries or private homes. Kinkade's project highlights the complicated tension between nature as untouched and nature as resource, landscape and lifestyle. Editor: I like how the overall light kinda obscures reality to make the world of the canvas somehow friendlier! This painting isn’t aiming for a cold realism and instead creates the *idea* of a welcoming space within that snow covered land. Curator: Which brings us to Kinkade's brand, his project of "painting light," one accessible through material reproductions sold widely. "Lingering Dusk," a manufactured vision designed to be bought, consumed, and hung on a wall: pure object. Editor: Yes, and in a way, isn't that the game all art is playing? Holding a mirror—maybe a rose-tinted one—to the longings and contradictions we carry inside. Curator: A thought provoking point to end our dialogue!