Who painted this picture.....?

Question

I have this picture, of a stream, snow covered trees, and sun going up or coming down in the dark background. It's an oil painting and on the bottom right it has a name and I can't figure out who painted it, some say it says Kratz or Kraft or kraintz. I have checked several sites and no one has a reprint of it so i can see who the artist is. I know it is about 20 years old.

Photo links
http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd207/lilpaulare/Picture177.jpg
http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd207/lilpaulare/Picture176.jpg

Answer 1

I'll Buy It From You -- $5 Bucks Sound Okay?

Answer 2

I agree with the second answerer.
That is more or less the answer I gave you a couple of days ago on the basis of your description only, but when you edited the question (or reposted it?), my answer and another one disappeared. (What happened to them?) (Edit: I see that they were posted under a different name/account: organizepro_austin... but you're still the same person(s), right? The photos are identical and the description is, too.)

After seeing the painting, I confirm my opinion. As I said then, the furniture stores over here are full of them, for people who want to have paintings to hang without spending a whole lot. It's "decoration art".

Edit: As someone over here explained it to me, sometimes these paintings are even done in an assembly-line type system, with more than one artist working on them. For example, one does the wash-like underpainting that will become the sky and the stream, another does the landscape parts, another does the tree shapes, and another does the final foliage, greenery, and/or snow. Each has his or her own specialization.

More here:
"WARNING! Fake art being sold on eBay and Yahoo! - Paintings are being sold on eBay and other auction sites that are mass-produced in factories. The people doing the work are trained to paint the same painting over and over, or to paint one element, such as the sky, and then the painting is handed to the next person to paint a tree and so on. The paintings are cheap - $0.01, $9.95, $24.99, etc., and are being represented as 'real oil paintings', not prints, 'hand made', and so on. Most are either unsigned or signed only with initials (although some are signed with made-up names). Some are reproductions of old masters works (that's o.k. as long as they don't represent them as originals). "

and:

"In addition to online auctions, mass-produced paintings are being sold in stores in cities all across America - Pier 1, Garden Ridge Pottery, Bed Bath and Beyond to name a few. And, you've seen the ads on TV - 'Giant sofa-sized painting, only $25 dollars!' It is very sad that unsuspecting buyers are wasting their money on this junk!

"There is no creativity or originality in these rip-offs, and they will never increase in value. Real artists are going bankrupt trying to compete with thousands of these fakes that are flooding the market."
http://www.paulinewalshjacobson.com/art_frauds_fakes.htm

And here is a VERY interesting slide show, with info and pictures, illustrating the system (in China):
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2005/07/14/business/20050715_PAINT_SLIDESHOW_1.html

Answer 3

these are mass produced by poor artists in 3rd world countries like Poland, Indonesia and India and China. one artist will paint this painting in 1 hour while another adept at something else(flowers) will do the same in a warehouse all year long. 1 artist will produce hundreds, thousands of the same scene with his name on it.