On that point, I saw a pretty great documentary about Thomas Kinkade called "Art for Everybody" a year or so ago at a film festival. Was pretty fascinating. I won't give away too much but was really interesting to go into the man (and his other artwork) behind the facade.

I'd pay a decent amount of some of his darker paintings.

I don't knock Banksy for making a buck here and there. I can't see he even licenses any of his art for merch. He says all his art is free for non-commercial use. I don't think there's any commercial aspect to his work. When I briefly knew some of his graffiti friends in the early 2000s they were struggling like crazy to try and make a quid or two from their art. They were all doing art-for-art's-sake. They were selling their best pieces on eBay for peanuts to pay their bills, or to buy other art they wanted to own. I just regret not buying one of his first pieces when he was selling them for about 100 quid a piece o_O

Which is fascinating to think he wanted to mass produce art and then after he died, the same thing happened; all of his stuff that was still around ended up creating a scarcity and driving up the price of his stuff anyways.