Before they were known as the "Painter of Light" and the "Creator of
Dinotopia," Thomas Kinkade and James Gurney were known the "Hoisters," two
21-year old grimy hobo artists crossing America by freight train. "Hoisting"
is a term they coined to refer to a sketching adventure.
Thomas Kinkade and James Gurney first met at age 17 as freshman college
roomates at the University of California, and then later as fellow students
at Art Center in Pasadena. They worked together as background painters on
Ralph Bakshi's Fire and Ice, and as co-authors of the instructional book The
Artist's Guide to Sketching (Watson-Guptill, 1982).
The idea for the book on sketching gave them the impetus to jump into a
boxcar in the Los Angeles rail yard and head east. To raise money they did
marker sketches of bar patrons, usually by the light of cigarette machines or
neon beer signs. They knocked on doors offering to do house portraits for
$10.00. They slept in graveyards, on rooftops, and alongside rumbling diesel
engines. At one point they were kicked off the train at gunpoint by the
police department of Willard Ohio. They had been spotted trying to fly a kite
from the top of the train car moving at 60 miles an hour.
When they reached New York, they couldn't afford a hotel, so they slept on a
burnt-out pier on the west side, where the tidewater lapped against their
portfolios and gave their drawings a fishy smell. Dressed in gas station
uniforms that said "Jim" and "Tom" they visited publishers offices to try to
sell their idea for the sketching book. They had written the outline on paper
placemats from a Burger King on the Upper West Side.
