Artist James Coleman

OK, I'm out of my league here.  The Discoshaman and Joe Carter are ganging up on the rest of the blog world and trying to help help evangelicals rekindle their appreciation for art.

Disco threw the first punch here.

Joe has thrown three more punches here, here and here.

I have to confess that I have never really understood art.  I guess growing up in the south and being into sports, it was kind of unmanly to be into art, at least in my circle of friends.  I have never been able to come up with anything to say about a piece of artwork that is more sophisticated than "that's kind of nice," or "ewwww, you mean people actually pay money for that."

My lovely and talented wife did help me out a bit this past year.  We were in LA and went to the Getty Museum (I wanted to walk into the Coliseum and commune with the ghosts of Carl Lewis and Sam the Bam Cunningham but it was locked, so I dutifully went to the Getty Museum with my wife).  The Getty Museum was actually a good experience for me and my wife explained some art techniques and pointed out how this painter shaded things this way or that, and how another used light and texture and other things and I gained a new appreciation for some of the art there. 

But I still have a long way to go in understanding art.  I appreciated what Joe and Disco had to say but I still can't get past the idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder (and I realize that I am going to get lit up by art aficionados for that comment), so maybe someone can help me out here.

I do know from Joe and many others that Thomas Kinkade is bad, but I still can't quite grasp why he is so bad.  Also, I was in an art gallery in St. Augustine, FL last summer and they had some paintings by James Coleman which I really liked.  They said that he paints in somewhat the same style as Kinkade, but is much better.  Fair enough, but I would like to know what makes him better.
I'm not itching to go out and buy a Kinkade or anything, I much prefer Florida Gator football posters and pictures of Steve Spurrier, Emmitt Smith and Danny Wuerffel for my walls (oh yeah, and pictures, of my wife, lots of pictures of my wife!).   But I would be curious as to what how anyone would compare Kinkade to Coleman.  Here is your chance to give an art lesson to a total ignoramous.  What makes Coleman better, if he is better. Or, are they both bad? The big thing is "does one artist convey a biblical worldview better than the other?"  If so how? 

Here's a link to Coleman's works and here's a link to Kinkade's works.

Here are a couple of Coleman's paintings that I really like - but are they really any good? Or are they any better than Kinkade?