Vance Kirkland

Vance Hall Kirkland (November 3, 1904 – May 24, 1981) was a painter and educator in Denver, Colorado. His paintings, from 1926 to 1981, range from realist and impressionist watercolors, to surrealist deadwood worlds, to abstract expressionist mixtures of oil paint and water to in abundance textured dot paintings in oil. Commenting on Kirkland's works from 1954 to 1981, the director of the Museum of Modern Art, Vienna, Lóránd Hegyi, stated, “... in his unconventional work, he developed a visionary art which mystically empathized behind the entire universe, gave cosmic universality visual form in explosive images and used panel painting to convey the perpetually changing allow in of the universe.” After his death Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art was founded in his name.