Thomas Kinkade, one of nation's most popular painters, dies in Los Gatos

[Hissyspit]

72. "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like"

is essentially what you are saying. It is an old defensive cliche regarding the visual and other arts.

Horst Janson wrote:

What that really means is 'I like what I know and I reject whatever fails to match the things I am familiar with.' Such likes are not in truth ours at all for they have been imposts by habit and culture without personal choice. We cherish the illusion of having made a personal choice in art when we have not...

In other words, you are not as autonomous as you think you are.

Let's reword the cliche:

"Who cares what art experts say, having spent their whole lives studying art and exposing themselves to the massive amount of creative visual expressions produced throughout human history, studying the many artists who have spent their lives exploring the vast potentials of the painting arts, including technique, creativity, and expression, to the greater understanding of our human existence. None of that means anything just as long as someone gets to feel good from some con artist's third-rate fantasy art." Sounds kind of hedonistic and anti-intellectual, doesn't it?

Kinkade was very good at exploiting the need of people to hold on to those ideas of what feels "cozy."

He was a greedy hack, and for a while, a very good one, but not sincere. There is no inspiration there.