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Cobblestone Evening

There are inspiring places I return to time and again in my mind. The English Cotswolds, which represent for me a simple, profoundly human, and deeply spiritual way of life are one such favorite destination.

From our first stop at Cobblestone Lane I, we’ve followed a meandering footpath to a bridge, a brook, and a mill, considering at every turn the nature of time and the ways we can live in harmony with a world whose rhythms are utterly graceful and slow.

Throughout the series, I’ve imagined that our journey would end at just such a destination as we discover in Cobblestone Evening. We’ve come full circle with this classic English village, which returns us to our imaged brook and bridge, and to some of the humble, utterly charming stone cottages we’ve visited along the way.

Fittingly, our ramble ends at just that breathless hour when the plump trout are biting in the brook, and stillness wraps the land in a fleecy blanket of perfect peace.

Grazing sheep symbolize the bucolic peacefulness of a pastoral scene that is best enjoyed in a sumptuous vision like that present in Cobblestone Evening. This journey is at an end, but we know that others await.

  • Thomas Kinkade has placed a total of twelve N’s in Cobblestone Evening as a gesture of his ongoing love for his wife Nanette.
  • Cobblestone Evening is the seventh and final image the Cobblestone Lane Collection. Do you recognize some of the cottages in the distance from the original Cobblestone Lane I? The series is based on a trip the Kinkades made in 2004 to the English Cotswolds, one of their favorite travel destinations.
  • The bridge of Cobblestone Evening was inspired by a fishing sanctuary located on a country estate in Fairford in the Cotswolds. Thom and Nanette used to have picnics on the lawns of the fishing preserve and would watch the fisherman from the Edwardian bridge. In England, the preservation of a stream is allocated to an individual known as Water Warden – could this fisherman be the very same warden that Thom and Nanette knew so well in Fairford?
  • Thom has always been drawn to sheep. He sees them as a symbol of village life and a true feature of England.
  • Many of the images Thom has painted, such as Broadwater Bridge, are based on the same area of the stream depicted in Cobblestone Evening. This image is released on the fifteenth anniversary of Thom’s season of living in England.
  • Cobblestone Evening represents the slow-paced little towns and villages of England, as well as the preservation of the act of fishing. These are some of the things Thom feels make an idyllic life and are all shown in Cobblestone Evening – the village beyond, a spectacular luminous sky, and the sunset reflected in the gentle stream populated by geese and ducks.
Title Cobblestone Evening
Published June 2007
Subject Location Fairford in the Cotswolds, England
Collection Cobblestone Lane VII

Image Sizes

18" x 27"
24" x 36"
28" x 42"

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