"My art represents a yearning for a comfortable place of warmth and security, one of serenity in the chaos of our day."

Thomas Kinkade was speaking by phone from his compound in the hills above ritzy Los Gatos, near San Jose. "A couple of acres," he said. "We fashioned it into a Monet's Garden setting."

The self-named Painter of Light (a trademarked term) is the most-collected artist of our time and likely the best-selling in history – even though what he sells are essentially paint-highlighted, canvas-mounted "posters" of originals. His specialties are light-filled scenes of cottages, lighthouses and chapels, and seaside and pastoral landscapes. But don't overlook his depictions of cities and towns (San Francisco, Capitola, New York) and landmark places (Disneyland, Graceland, Yankee Stadium).

"If you like six sugars in your coffee, these paintings are for you," commented "60 Minutes" correspondent Morley Safer in his 2001 report on the Kinkade cultural phenomenon.

The landslide started in 1984 when Kinkade and his wife, Nanette, set up a card table in a Placerville shopping center and sold the first published prints of his paintings for $35 each (they're worth thousands now). The event was connected to one of many fundraisers Kinkade has held for his hometown over the years.

"If you sell a painting, only a few people get to see it," Kinkade explained. "But if you publish and sell a print, millions get to see it."

Since then, Kinkade has built a magic kingdom from his "factory art" (shades of Henry Ford), a template of assembly-line merchandising with no boundaries in sight. For instance, a nationwide network of art galleries specializes in his brand, and officially endorsed Web sites sell a staggering list of Kinkade-themed goods, from kitsch to furniture. His art has even been hawked on QVC, the shop-from-home cable channel.

Then there's The Village: A Thomas Kinkade Community near Vallejo, where the houses were modeled after Kinkade's soft-focus, idealized cottages. And this: By next summer, said a spokesman for Stonehouse Winery in Plymouth, a cozy, Kinkade-like cottage will be built on the property to serve as a wedding chapel.

"What has fueled the multibillion-dollar Kinkade industry is a fundamental connection with people emotionally," he said. "My art is comfort art, the equivalent of comfort food. People want to be reminded of the foundation things they believe in – home, family, the beauty of nature."

Those elements are on display in 150 of his "most beloved paintings" in a new book, "Thomas Kinkade: Twenty-Five Years of Light" (Andrews McMeel, $15, 180 pages). It celebrates his "silver anniversary in the world of art." It also contains anecdotes, family photos and recollections of key events in his life. Its shape and front cover make it look like a homey photo album.

Joining the book is the DVD "The Christmas Cottage," in video stores Tuesday. The film is based on an "inspirational episode" in Kinkade's life when he was a college student and had returned to Placerville during Christmas break. The movie is predictably sentimental, but the cast is surprisingly heavyweight. It includes Marcia Gay Harden (an Academy Award winner for her role in "Pollock") as Kinkade's mother, Maryanne, and the distinguished Peter O'Toole as his mentor, artist Glenn Wessels.

Kinkade, 50, was born in Sacramento and lived briefly in a trailer park in Latrobe before his divorced mother bought a converted laborer's shack in a former pear orchard in Placerville ("I always felt like I was from the wrong side of the tracks"). He was a math prodigy who, during his teen years, worked with Wessels after school.

Later, Kinkade graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. He married his childhood sweetheart, Nanette ("We fell in love when I was 13 and she was 12"); they're the parents of four daughters, ages 12 to 20.

After art school, you and your friend James Gurney hoboed around the country and then published "The Artist's Guide to Sketching." You both ended up working for Ralph Bakshi in Los Angeles, the filmmaker who made the counterculture "Fritz the Cat" and "Heavy Traffic."

Call The Bee's Allen Pierleoni, (916) 321-1128.