That one speaks to me.
First of all I will say that I’m sorry to hear of his passing at age 54, only 3 years older than me and that’s way too young IMO. I’m sorry for his family.
I think the man had some talent especially in his younger years and as an illustrator, but I wouldn’t consider him a great artist. Like someone else said, his paintings were “decorative”; nice if you like it but not fine art. Someone also mentioned “greeting card art” and that pretty much sums up Kincaid for me. There are many commercial artists toiling away producing similar and just as good if not better pictures and not making much money doing so. His work was very repetitive and after a time mass produced factory style by others with his name merely stamped on them and being sold for some rather outrageous prices to rather gullible folks that thought they were buying “Art” that would appreciate in value. My brother and SIL are among those.
What Kincaid was especially good at was marketing and self promotion and the art of franchising his “brand” even if it meant screwing over his franchisees.
On a more personal note, I actually had the distinct displeasure of speaking to the man on the phone a few times back in the mid ‘90’s when I worked as an office manager for a professional firm that had Kincaid as one of its many wealthy clients. The few brief times I spoke with him, he was rude, arrogant and quite nasty. One time he called to speak with one of the senior partners and was outraged when I very politely told him that the partner was currently in a meeting and offered to take a message and have him return the call just as soon as he was available. Kincaid cursed at me and wouldn’t take no for an answer and actually said something to the effect of “I’m too busy and important to wait around for a return phone call.” followed by “Don’t you know who I am?” I had actually been warned by some of my co-workers when I started the job about his verbal abusiveness and nastiness to the office staff.
I wasn’t a big fan of his work before then but after those experiences, I never looked at his paintings in quite the same way.
“He wanted to make people happy.” "With whatever talent and resources I have, I'm trying to bring light to penetrate the darkness many people feel."
He didn’t exactly practice what he preached IMO at least from my personal experience. He didn't impress me as a happy person. I hope he mellowed out before he died.