“I’m a gardener with a paintbrush whose loveliest flowers bloom on canvas.”

Thomas Kinkade, The Gardener's Retreat, 2002. Oil on board, 12 x 16 inches. ©️Nanette Kinkade Family Trust.

Like many artists, Thomas Kinkade drew inspiration and subject matter in gardens. As a young artist in 1985, Kinkade traveled to Claude Monet's legendary gardens in Giverny, France, where Monet found inspiration nearly a century earlier. An avid gardener, Monet used his garden as a living masterpiece and a subject for many of his famous works. “I perhaps owe it to flowers that I became a painter,” Monet once said.

Kinkade, too, likened himself to a gardener whose garden plot was his canvas and paintbrush his tool for creating colorful scenes of the natural world. "I am a gardener with a paint brush whose loveliest flowers bloom on canvas,” Thomas Kinkade said.

Kinkade said of this painting, "Gardener’s Retreat is a rustic cottage enveloped by summer abundance. I felt energized as I painted; there is a zest, a joyful freedom in the brushstrokes that captivates me. There is a connection between artist and nature that is just so exciting."

Thomas Kinkade painting en plein air in Claude Monet’s gardens in Giverny, France, 1985. ©️Nanette Kinkade Family Trust.