Vance Kirkland

One of my favorite little museum's is the Kirkland Museum in downtown Denver.  The museum has on display more than 3,300 pieces of modernist decorative art and a retrospective of Vance Kirkland.

 Vance Kirkland

(1904 - 1981)

The Energy of Explosion - Twenty-four Billion Years B.C.

65" x 55"

Kirkland's career spanned more than fifty years.  He first painted in water colors and later he adopted his unique technique of oil and water mixture applied as dots.  Many of his color combinations were derived from classical music.  He was synesthetic, he could hear color as he applied it.

Kirkland's canvases were big and his was only 5'2" tall.  In order to paint his abstract paintings, he lay across straps that were hung from the ceiling above his painting.  He used a skateboard under the canvas to move it around the table.  He also preferred to work in this manner for he did not think of his paintings as directional (an obvious bottom).  He rarely signed his paintings because of this and if he did, he might have signed it twice.

The museum is a real gem and one I really love to visit.

Kirkland Museum
1311 Pearl Street
Denver, Colorado
www.kirklandmuseum.org 

For further readings on the  museum, see my posts dated June 29, 2011, July 3, 2011 and July 6, 2011.