These homes are straight out of a painting

COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho — Fans of Thomas Kinkade's sentimental paintings soon will be able to do more than hang them on the wall. They could hang them on the wall of a house designed to look exactly like one of Kinkade's paintings.

The California artist, beloved by middlebrow America but reviled by the art establishment, has signed a deal with developers in this resort city to help design five lake-view homes that are copies of homes in paintings such as "Beyond Autumn Gate."

The homes will cost $4 million to $6 million, part of an explosion of McMansions being built around Lake Coeur d'Alene as this once-fading timber and mining town gets remade by tourists and retirees.

"I had clients for years tell me 'I'd like to have a house like this' and show me a Kinkade painting," said Rann Haight, the architect who is designing the homes. "I said, 'Why not?' "

While it is easy to snicker at the work of the self-proclaimed "painter of light," millions collect Kinkade paintings.

Still, Mark Nash, a real-estate expert from the Chicago area, said it's a bold move to market extremely expensive homes to Kinkade fans.

"The Kinkade art style has never been positioned as a luxury one," Nash said. "It might be a stretch to make a Rolls-Royce out of a Buick brand. But money has not always been able to buy you taste."

Robert Niles — who created the satirical Web site "Reuben Kinkade, Painter of Stuff," complete with a photo of the fictional manager of "The Partridge Family" — said fans of Thomas Kinkade's art can be single-minded in their devotion.

"Kinkade's stuff is as cloying as a box of Lucky Charms," Niles said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "I just was amused by the misguided fans who thought his stuff was high art and a great investment."

If Kinkade is crying, it is all the way to the bank because his paintings and spin-off products are said to fetch some $100 million a year in sales and to be in 10 million homes in the U.S.

Works by Kinkade, who labels himself the nation's most-collected living artist, generally depict tranquil scenes, such as country homes and churches, lighthouses, lush landscaping and cottages with streams running nearby.

Kinkade was too busy to speak with The Associated Press, said Jim Bryant, a spokesman for Thomas Kinkade Co. in Morgan Hill, Calif.

The artist gets many requests from builders and others who want to capitalize on his work, but this project in Idaho was one of the best, Bryant said. Details of Kinkade's financial involvement were not disclosed, but Kinkade is not contributing any money to the project.

The artist does appear in a video promoting the development.

"People tell me they often wish they could enter into one of my paintings," Kinkade says in the video. "Now you can."

Haight and his partners, financier Roger Stewart and builder Steve Torres, will not be the first to convert a Kinkade canvas into bricks and mortar.

In 2002, a development of 140 homes near Vallejo, Calif., inspired by Kinkade's work, sold out, but at much more modest prices of around $400,000.

The artist will participate in the design of the five Idaho homes, Haight said.

"Kinkade is a frustrated architect, and I am a frustrated artist, so we can work together," Haight said.

The homes will be built on a 20-acre site with spectacular views near Bennett Bay on Lake Coeur d'Alene, about 40 miles east of Spokane. The project, called The Gates of Coeur d'Alene, features homes from Kinkade's "Gate" paintings.

Coeur d'Alene has become a magnet for well-to-do urban refugees, and million-dollar houses are no longer rare, especially near the 30-mile-long lake. Home prices climbed nearly 30 percent last year — among the top 10 highest increases in the nation — to an average sales price of $210,000.

One of the newcomers was Haight, who moved from the Sacramento area a decade ago.

Kinkade gave the architect and builder permission to be flexible with the home designs, Haight said, but the goal is to make them as close to the painted images as possible.

"If you are a fan of Kinkade, you're going to be real excited about going in these things," Haight said.

Haight said they picked homes in five paintings that they considered most appropriate for the construction site.

"If we do this right, you could photograph the house and it would have the same proportions and same perspective as the painting," Haight said.

However, Haight said it would be difficult to replicate the leafy English countryside in the evergreen Northwest.

He expects buyers to come from all over the nation.

"It's going to be in Coeur d'Alene first, but ultimately the plan is to go national with it," Haight said.