Vance Kirkland: Colorado's Pre-eminent Artist
• At the Cleveland School of Art, he flunked his freshman watercolor class. His
instructors chastised him for painting his landscapes in unusual colors which
they felt had no business being there. Aspiring artist Vance Kirkland could have
packed it in and headed back home to the small farming community of Convoy,
Ohio. But he didn't. He stayed the course, improved his craft, won first prizes
for his watercolors in his junior and senior years, earned a fellowship, and
began teaching watercolor.
• In 1929, at the age of 24, he moved west to establish the University of
Denver's School of Art. In addition to providing instruction, he continued to
paint with the freedom afforded him by the financial security teaching art
offered. For the next 52 years, he experimented with innovative techniques,
stepped outside the boundaries of convention, and translated what his mind
perceived into paintings imbued with intriguing nuances and explosions of color.
And Colorado and the world of art have been richly blessed by his contributions.
• Today, his body of work is well-represented at the Vance Kirkland Museum
in Denver. Museum director Hugh Grant grew up knowing the artist; he served as
the executor of Kirkland's estate (the artist died in 1981), and he has
painstakingly labored to bring the museum to fruition. Kirkland's School of Art,
which the artist operated from 1932 to 1946, was housed in an early twentieth
century Arts & Crafts style building at 1311 Pearl Street. Refurbished and
expanded, that very building serves today as the nucleus of the display space.
"It is highly unusual to have the artist's original studio in the museum," Grant
says.
• In addition to Kirkland's creations, there are more than 2,000 objects
of decorative arts on display including furniture, ceramics, metal ware, glass,
and plastic. The exhibit space showcases a good compilation of work by other
Colorado artists including paintings, sculptures, ceramics, and
Colorado-designed furniture. Elaborating on the extensive variety of the
collection, Grant states that "we can show many of the movements of the first
three-quarters of the 20th century and demonstrate what was going on with
decorative arts simultaneously with painting and sculpture."
• From the moment a visitor enters the building through the front door
flanked by two 1904 sidelights designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the environs
encourage a relaxed and personal visit. The arrangements of the art generate
strikingly-compelling vignettes of modern art design elements. It's almost as if
the visitor has traveled back in time and wandered into the stylish home of a
savvy collector and decorator.
• Kirkland's eye-catching creations, placed liberally and deliberately,
are deservedly the stars of the show. The evolution of the artist through the
years is well-represented. His painting encompassed five periods, beginning with
designed realism. Mostly watercolors, these early works explore distinctly
western themes featuring landscapes and ghost towns.
• The period of surrealism which followed yields powerful images depicting
fantasy landscapes filled with palpable life forces. "Nature was a co-creator of
the paintings," Grant says. The interpretation of nature in his next phase of
hard edge abstraction features striking colors, dramatic shapes, and dynamic
movement.
• As an abstract expressionist in his subsequent stage, Kirkland was an
innovator of the use of oil and water employed together. "They aren't pure
abstractions," Grant explains. "The paintings have some kind of meaning." This
point is borne out in the fact that Kirkland titled each of his creations. He
hated to sign the pieces, however, believing that by choosing a corner in which
to sign it, he condemned the painting to be hung with a particular orientation.
• The dot paintings produced during Kirkland's final phase are perhaps the
artist's best known works. Over a color-saturated oil and water base, Kirkland
dabbed on dots of paint with wooden dowels or other implements. "Large in scale
and visually demanding, Kirkland's glorious late paintings provide a spectacular
capstone to his long and productive career," comments Dianne Perry Vanderlip,
Denver Art Museum Curator. Photographs don't do justice to the multi-dimensional
aspect experienced when the art is viewed in person. The explosively colorful
canvases which interpret the energy, mystery, and power of space and creation
virtually vibrate with movement.
• "His paintings have been described as very beautiful, but Kirkland said
that that didn't make them better, just different," Grant recalls. Suffice it to
say that anyone who views these magnificent pieces would certainly say that they
are simultaneously different and beautiful.
• Carol Dickinson, the Executive Director of the Foothills Art Center in
Golden, Colorado sums up the artist's contributions in this fashion: "Vance
Kirkland is Colorado's greatest candidate for modernist immortality."
By Claudia Cangilla McAdam