A whole world exists for no longer than a second, but it has a both a unique past and a curious future. In his painting Nanette’s Cottage, Thomas Kinkade creates a world that seems to live and breathe but it is only a still frame in time. This creates a strange mysterious feeling in the viewer as they become curious about the stories or adventures that might take place in this world. Kinkade uses the view imagination as the greatest paintbrush in creating this scene. Kinkade’s Nanette’s Cottage uses color, focus, and extensive detail to force the viewer’s imagination into creating a dynamic world that pulls in the viewer and grants a different perspective on our own world.

The color is the first thing that pops out in this painting. The painting uses the colors of spring to populate the foreground and mid ground. The eye is initially drawn towards a large bush with pink flowers in the center of the painting. The pink bush is near a contrasting blue bush that together frame what is assumed to be the titular cottage. This gives an image that the cottage is a part of nature and in turn is a part of this whole world. The cottage doesn’t stick out; with its straw roof it blends into the scenery. Since there are no people in the image it is the cottage’s role to represent humanity, and it blending in shows that in this land the people are in harmony with nature. The foreground represents spring, however the tops of the trees in the near background are turning orange due to autumn, and the distant background has a white and pale blue color that is familiar with winter. The colors represent the season, showing that this world is dynamic and changes. The seasons give an implied and shared human understanding of time passing, though a still painting cannot show the time change. This change in color shows the viewer that the real world is filled with beauty. The colors of the seasons show time passing, but also stress the beauty in temporal shifts of the world. The dynamicity of the universe is unique and magnificent.  The color usage in the painting gives a sense of the unseen to the viewer.

Almost as important as the unseen images are the seen images that Kinkade hides in the painting. The colors focus the viewer toward the forward most cottage, but with closer inspection there are several cottages that the view may not initially notice. Once the viewer sees the other cottages their attention is then diverted even further towards the distant background. Far in the back, way out of the main focus of the painting is a spire. This spire could be a church, a castle, or a mountain, but the images are so distant that it is hard to tell. This makes the viewer guess for themselves and just like a literary text causes the reader to form a picture in their head, the out of focus image causes the viewer to choose what the spire actually looks like. This takes the control away from the painter and into the imagination of the reader, making the painting much more powerful. The expanse in this word parallel but doesn’t near match that of the real world. The viewer can take the mysterious of this flat world and apply it to their own and understand how much there is to see. These cottages and distant tower cause the viewer to get a more dynamic and rounder images of what this place is.

The painting rounds out the world by concentrating heavily on very small parts of the image. In the very close foreground of the painting are two ducks. There are no people or any animals other than these two ducks. They are surrounded by reeds and flowers; they have a whole environment, but they aren’t the main focus of the painting. They show that this is more than a painting of a cottage, but of a whole world. By focusing on the small detail Kinkade imitates life, because the real world does not exist for one life but it has many lives and countless narratives. Our world has complexity in the small things of life, and so does this painting. The painting also concentrates on the smoke. Every cottage has smoke rising out of its chimney, and many are glowing. The smoke shows movement; it again displays the idea that the painting is not one moment in time, but it is a dynamic world. The smoke and glowing lights also imply that there are people in the cottages. The viewer can be shown here that the world is more than what they see, not only this one but also their own. The viewer is can take this concentration on small details and apply it outside to gain a better grasp on what the encounter in their everyday. This further deepens the dynamic existence of the world, by showing that there are people here that we can’t see.

This world that Kinkade has created a complex world by just a painting, a world that seems to persist beyond moment the viewer sees of it. The familiar colors create feelings that any person would understand drawing them in and they feel the world. The strange focus causes the viewer to take in the world in a specific order and become curious of what they can barely see. The extensive detail allows the viewer to know that this painting is of more than just a cottage but of a living environment. This power that Kinkade has of creating a world is a great one, but it doesn’t work without the imagination of others. Imagination is like a fire, you have to feed it; feed it color feed it details, but don’t overdo it, give it space. Just like with a fire, giving too much will douse it and it will die out, that is where his use of focus becomes key. Kinkade’s neglects the viewers curious mind just enough so that the mind fills in the blanks with what it wants. Kinkade’s use of color, focus, and extensive detail creates a round and dynamic world in the painting Nanette’s Cottage by leading what the audience imagines while viewing the painting.
