Thomas Kinkade - Artist or Megalomaniac?

My wife and I just saw a piece on the popular American artist Thomas Kinkade -- chances are you've seen one of his paintings in a home or office:

Who is the artist who has sold more canvases than any other painter in history? More than Picasso, Rembrandt, Gaughin, Monet, Manet, Renoir and Van Gogh combined?

If you didn't say Thomas Kinkade, then you’ve been shopping in the wrong places. He is the most collected living artist in the U.S. and worldwide.

He produces paintings by the container load. And he is to art what Henry Ford was to automobiles. . . . READ MORE

This guy figured out a way to mass-produce his oil paintings (not just photo-reproducing; he actually 'hand-touches' the copies w/ his brush, and sells the framed paintings at $1000 to 50,000 a pop. He's mass-marketed his paintings to the masses, followed by the 'Walt Disney' hailstorm of products:

"You can put a Thomas Kinkade couch beneath your Thomas Kinkade painting. Next to the Thomas Kinkade couch goes the Thomas Kinkade end table. On top of that goes your collection of Thomas Kinkade books, Thomas Kinkade collectibles, Thomas Kinkade throw rugs. You can snuggle your Thomas Kinkade teddy bear. . . . and you can put all of that inside your new Thomas Kinkade home in the Thomas Kinkade subdivision."

No kidding. "More than 100 homes, all modeled on his cutesy, cozy cottages, have been built in Vallejo, Calif., outside San Francisco."

Either this guy is hellbent on making a buck or he's so utterly convinced of his own Kinkade vision of how reality ought to be (cottages, lighthouses, gardens, in lovely rainbow brilliance) that he wants to evangelize the world and make converts of us all. He's the veritable HITLER of mass-market art.

Every now and then when somebody sees my portfolio they suggest that I sell my work; every now and then I'm honestly tempted, but this manner of art-turned-commercialism really freaks me out.