Vance Kirkland was an American painter known for his experimentation with abstraction and color fields across five major periods over his 54-year career. He received his art education at the Cleveland Institute of Art before moving to Denver in 1924, where he would live and work for the rest of his life. Kirkland helped establish Denver as a center for modern art through his own pioneering abstract works, his teaching, and his promotion of arts organizations in the city. Though largely unknown outside of Colorado during his lifetime, Kirkland's innovative techniques and use of color anticipated many postwar art movements.

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VANCE
KIRKLAND
1904 – 1981
AMERICAN PAINTER
Special thanks go to Holly Victor, Chantelle Sylvester and Hugh Grant of the Vance Kirkland
Museum in Denver. They were very helpful in rounding up materials and offering special
prices on the slides, prints, and videos. In addition, thank you to Norwest Bank for a 2001
grant that helped provide student art materials for this unit. The bulk of the information and
comments came from a video produced by KRMA in Denver.
This art unit meets the following Mesa
County Valley School District #51 content
standards:
ART
Standard 1: Students recognize and use the visual arts as a form of communication.
Standard 2: Students know and apply elements of art, principles of design, and sensory and
expressive features of visual arts.
Standard 3: Students know and apply visual arts materials, tools, techniques, and processes.
Standard 4: Students relate the visual arts to various historical and cultural traditions.
Standard 5: Students analyze and evaluate the characteristics, merits, and meaning of works of
art.
Science:
Standard 2: PHYSICAL SCIENCE: Students know and understand common properties, forms,
and changes in matter and energy. (focus: physics and chemistry).
Standard 4: EARTH AND SPACE SCIENCE: Students know and understand the processes and
interactions of earth‘s systems and the structure and dynamics of earth and other objects in
space.
Copyright 2/2001. Property of the Art Heritage Program, Mesa County Valley School District #51, Grand Junction, CO. No part may be
copied in part or in whole without permission. Certain materials are included under the fair use exemption of the U.S. Copyright Law and
have been prepared according to the multimedia fair use guidelines and are restricted from further use. The information contained within
this artist unit is a compilation of information gleaned from several sources, some unknown. If credit has not been properly given, please
contact our office so this can be corrected.

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SUMMARY
Vance Kirkland received his art schooling at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Because
Kirkland lived and created in Denver, he was as well-known in the New York and
Chicago art circles where the likes of Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler and others
were also experimenting with color fields. Dr. Elizabeth Brown, a curator at the
Smithsonian said, “He always had the confidence of his own opinions…his own
techniques …I think it shows in his choice of subjects, the techniques, and even his
willingness to make an entire career in Denver…and let the world find out where he
was.”
His work and creativity spanned most of the modern art movements. Kirkland‘s work
also captured the uniqueness and essence of Colorado‘s landscape and history.
In addition to his own painting, Kirkland was an art educator and active promoter of the
arts, particularly 20th
century art, music and furniture.
He loved music and enjoyed listening to all kinds while he was painting. He also held
recitals in his studio and art school. A ballet was once staged using his ―Nebula‖
paintings as a backdrop. He helped found and administer the Denver Art Museum.
Kirkland's alchemic techniques and clever use of color showcase his avant-garde
attitude and style. His work, approximately 1,100 paintings, over 54 years spanned five
major periods:
1. Designed Realism (1927-1944) – Kirkland’s early work was mostly
watercolor. His favorite subjects were: overall landscapes, close-ups, rocks,
deadwood, clouds and mountains, ghost towns and ruins.
2. Surrealist (1939-1954) - mostly watercolor. During this period, fantasy
worlds with deadwood come to life as creatures, strange flowers and plants,
and miniature people dwarfed by nature.
3. Hard Edge Abstraction (1947-1957) - 50% watercolor, 50% oil. Kirkland
abandoned traditional watercolor when he started making abstract canvases
using oil and water combinations spread on oil backgrounds. He used line,
color and texture to suggest leaf, deadwood and rock shapes, and even wood
graining reminiscent of the Rocky Mountains at timberline altitude
4. Abstract Expressionism/Floating Abstractions (1951-1964) – oil;
generally bright colors. Kirkland’s abstract paintings in this period appear to
be expanding, swirling and exploding. These paintings were expressions of
what he saw in his travels around the world and what he imagined space
might be like.
5. "The Dot Paintings"/Energy in Space Abstractions (1963-1981) – oils;
floating oil and water forms, interspersed with dots; patterns are free form. In
his last works, Kirkland used vibrating dots to portray the energy and
magnetic objects in space. Backgrounds develop great, undulating currents,
force fields and shock waves against which the generally smaller explosions
are seen.

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Kirkland also did about 500 drawings, predominantly litho crayon but also pencil, ink,
ballpoint pen and charcoal - notably not using watercolor for drawings, but only for full-
fledged paintings. In addition, he created about 12 print editions (mostly black and white
lithographs on stone, 1930-41), and mural commissions for U.S. Post Offices, the
Denver Country Club, department stores, ceilings for mansions, etc. (1936-45).
VOCABULARY
Abstract Art – art that is geometric in design or simplified from its natural appearance;
abstract art does not need to look like anything real.
Abstract Expressionism – two phases: Early c. 1930-45 and Classic c. 1946-60;
stresses spontaneity and individuality; famous examples are Kandinsky and Pollock;
paint techniques might include throwing paint; interpretations are highly imaginary.
Frank Mechau painted in this style as well.
Avant-garde – forward-thinking, futuristic artists who were ahead of their time in their art
work.
Biomorphic – shapes that appear organic, from nature.
Canvas – fabric stretched over a wood frame to paint on; often refers to any surface on
which paintings are created.
Resist – a painting technique where one art medium resists the other; wax resists
watercolor paint, for example. Kirkland mixed oil paint and water-based paint to create
his abstract paintings.
Surrealism – (1924-1945) an era of art expressed by fantastic imaginary thoughts and
images, often expressing dreams and sub-conscious thoughts as part of reality. The
most famous surrealists are Chagall, Magritte, Oppenheim, and Dali.
Watercolor – thin, transparent water-soluble paint; comes in children‘s watercolor
boxes, in squeeze tubes, and in dry blocks; when mixed with water, thins and is used as
paint.
SETTING THE SCENE (This information is based on a video produced by KRMA in Denver.)
Until the Armory Show in New York City in 1913, little modern art was seen in the United States.
However, the Armory Show was met with less than wild acceptance. It was derided as
―decadent‖ and ―trash‖.
After World War I, there were several art movements underway in Europe ranging from the
Cubists like Picasso, the colorists and expressionists of the Blaue Rieter and Bauhaus groups,
to the Surrealism of Dali and Magritte. The American art scene in contrast, was fairly traditional
until prior to and after World War II. The Nazis chased the avant-garde artists out of Europe.
Many fled to the United States, especially New York and Chicago. The United States and
Mexico became the center of invention and advance in the visual arts.
While Vance Kirkland was physically isolated from the art scene in New York and Chicago, his
work foretold many of the directions modern art took, often years before others delved into the
same techniques and subjects. In Kirkland‘s work, we see a small example of advances of art
over a 50-year period. His work echoes the scenery, history and riches of Colorado as well.

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Many artists of the modern world are well known because they were well marketed and
publicized, often for out of the ordinary behavior like Dali and Pollock. Kirkland did not have a
mentor like Peggy Guggenheim exhibiting and selling his work for him. Although Kirkland‘s
work is in the permanent collections of 15 museums in the world and his works were shown in
150 exhibitions all over the world, he is not a ―household name.‖
He not only devoted his life to creating art, but also to teaching and promoting the arts. The
current Colorado art scene owes a lot to his efforts. He was reluctant to be interviewed and did
not agree to extensive interviews until 1978, for a 50-year retrospective of his work at the
Denver Art Museum. He was never discovered by Time or Newsweek, although he still might
be. His artwork is too vibrant, unusual and deep to be ignored by anyone seeing it. It is just
now that he is finally being ―discovered‖ by art collectors.
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
“I like the idea of where I am, not where I have been,” stated Vance Kirkland. As a result, there
is little information about Kirkland‘s early life until he arrived in Colorado in 1924. He was born
on November 3, 1904 in Convoy, Ohio. His father was a dentist who thought his son could
never make a living as an artist. His mother was known for her needlepoint skills and good
cooking. We have no information on his early life until he entered the Cleveland School of Art in
1924.
Kirkland said of his art school years: “As a student, I was expected to look at nature and report
the surroundings…without imagination. Color was expected to look like nature.” Prophetically,
he flunked a watercolor class because his colors were not realistic and appeared too ―colorful.‖
Kirkland chose to devote his life to watercolor painting for approximately one-half of his artistic
career spanning 54 years.
Kirkland was influenced by three teachers: William Eastman introduced the idea of color as a
means to express emotion; Franck Wilcox showed Kirkland how to use color expressively to
show movement of color in nature; and, Henry Keller encouraged his students to venture into
the unknown in art experiences. Keller also taught the theory of abstract art, emphasizing
rhythm and design. Kirkland agreed with this enthusiastic teacher, stating, ―You can draw
inspiration from the same ideas and sources that other artists have had, but you have to find
some new way of doing it on your own. Then you have the right to think you are a creative artist
and not an imaginative artist.‖
Kirkland decided that he liked to teach art as well as create it. He took graduate studies at
Western Reserve and earned a B.A. from the Cleveland School of Art. Denver University
received a Carnegie Foundation grant to establish an art school in 1929. Kirkland was selected
to be the first director.
He arrived in Denver at the start of the Great Depression, a pioneer in the traditional frontier
way who intended to drag the local art world into the 20th
century. He was not interested in
painting the cowboys, Indians and covered wagons that were traditional local themes. He
looked at Colorado in a new way, adding vibrant colors and fresh interpretations to the old
scenes of ghost towns, timberline trees, mountains and streams. In 1941, he married Anne
Oliphant, who helped ease his way into Denver society.

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At the same time, he took on the Denver University establishment, striving to get equal status
for the fine arts. While he was successful in obtaining degree status for art students, he lost his
job over a battle for equal funding and representation for the Art School in 1932. He responded
by founding the Kirkland School of Art in an historic building on Pearl Street, the site of the first
art school in Colorado. The building at 1313 Pearl still houses some of his work. Colorado
University accredited his classes. He was invited back as head
of the Art School at D.U. in 1946. With over 400 students, it
became the largest of the Liberal Arts schools on the campus.
He kept that position until 1969.
Kirkland mastered many kinds of art during his long working
career. From the time he moved to Colorado until the early
1940‘s (27 years) he worked in watercolor. Many of these
paintings were of ghost towns and scenes of Colorado. Some
were whimsical, containing chipmunks, birds and other wildlife.
Lewis Sharp (administrator for the American Wing of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Denver Art
Museum) stated, ―…there is an overriding observation that one should make and certainly can
make in looking at Vance Kirkland‘s watercolor, and that is: he handled this medium as well as
any other American artist ever has…Vance Kirkland was a master…it is in the use of color, the
line and his ability to keep the freshness of the medium which already ranks him with those
masters (Sargent, Homer, Eakins, Marin, Burchfield) of this medium.‖
In the late 1930‘s, into the 1940‘s and up until 1954, Kirkland started making his watercolors
more abstract and surrealistic. Many of his images contained unusual colors and biomorphic
masses, some undersized human and animal figures as part of the landscape. Some resemble
Georgia O‘Keeffe‘s close-ups of plant life. Kirkland started experimenting more with oil, casein
and egg tempera. Eleanor Harvey of the Dallas Museum observed, ―…you have a sense that
the entire landscape ebbs and flows, forms and freezes in a way that manages, every time you
look at it, to seem something different…It‘s less a sense of being tied to a place and more to a
rhythm.‖ Kirkland seems to move beyond the outwardly visible life of an object to an inner look.
It was like he was looking for the source of meaning in nature. He stopped looking horizontally
at nature and looked to the ground from which everything seemed to spring. Kirkland said, ―All I
had to do was change the scale so that a little tiny plant could become a large tree, and the
small rocks became monumental mountains.‖
Kirkland would often dump buckets of water on his canvases to keep them wet enough to work.
He painted wearing goulashes (rubber boots). Kirkland was able to capture the transparent
effect of surrealism in watercolor, a feat that Dali and Magritte were able to accomplish only in
oil. Some of his works were displayed with those of Max Ernst‘s in New York in 1950.
While working at his painting, Kirkland was also administering the largest school in Arts and
Sciences at Denver University. He encouraged his students to look at the world differently. He
would often intimidate a student to spark emotions that would be translated onto the canvas.
Kirkland turned away from watercolor and the success he had with his surrealistic images in
1954 to try abstractions from nature using oils. For ten years he delved into what might exist
beyond structured organisms. Kirkland stated, “It was something that had to be done, otherwise
the watercolors would all be the same…It is the rebel who counts.” Kirkland experimented with
an oil and water resist he would apply to his abstract color planes. He called his creations,
Colorado Rockies Sunset, 1941

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―floating abstractions‖. For ten years, he created these brilliantly colored canvases. Some of
these paintings were of his impressions of ―outer space‖; others were inspired by his travels
around the world. “I did not want to spend any more of my time looking at nature. I wanted to
rise above it and beyond it…I did not want to be known as just a Colorado landscape artist,” he
stated.
Dr. Richard Brettel of the Dallas Museum of Art observed, “He was making use of the surface of
the painting as a kind of battle ground between oil and water, these two media liquids that resist
each other, and creating these incredible sorts of symphonies of color.” Kirkland painted the
large canvases by hanging suspended above them, as they were laid flat on a table. Critics
thought they were more indicative of the mysteries of space because of the suspended nature in
which he produced them rather than walking around them on a floor like Pollock and other
abstract artists were doing. Another reason Kirkland turned away from watercolor was to enjoy
working on the larger canvases. The watercolor surface was too hard to keep wet and lost its
vibrancy when it had to be re-wet.
Kirkland developed injuries because of the stress on his body. One of his apprentices said that,
because he was short, Kirkland was constantly stretching across the table where his canvases
were laid, straining his hip muscles against the table edge. The muscles were worn away and
he required a dual hip replacement. He eventually developed a system of belts and pulleys to
suspend him above the canvas. Even with the belt system, his body was heavily bruised from
hanging for long periods of time.
Kirkland enjoyed following the loss of control with his oil and water mix, “I do not know where my
paintings are going to go. Maybe if I knew exactly the way they would look when they were
going to be finished, I might not even do them at all. It would all be in my mind and I would not
need to go any further.” Each painting was a voyage or an adventure into the unknown.
Kirkland‘s abstracts were not greeted with the same enthusiasm his surrealistic watercolors
were. People had trouble relating to his images of what space and the explosive energy of
space might be like. Charles Stucky of the Art Institute of Chicago observed, “Oil and water and
various viscosities ooze together and interact to create these surfaces that seem almost
accidental, almost natural. It’s as if they’re made not so much by the artist, but by the
interaction of materials. That is in an odd way a landscape itself, rather than a representation of
a landscape.”
Kirkland lost interest in the space theme once science advanced to the point in the 1960‘s
where they could actually take photographs of outer space. “The paintings I thought of as being
just abstractions of outer space all of a sudden had a very realistic look to them. I did not want
to do what the photographer was doing to do with space.” Kirkland started devoting his
energies to abstracts of places he visited (primarily Italy and the Orient). Kirkland commented,
“I did a lot of thinking and wandering in museums and villas. I used my imagination to get the
essence from objects.” What he created was called “a foreign alphabet of colors” by one
historian. He was able to extract the power of other cultures and translate that power into color.
From the known world, Kirkland ventured into the unknown again when he created his own form
of art. From 1963 until his death in 1981, Kirkland developed a style of painting categorized as
―dot paintings‖. He explained, “What I wanted to do was combine the excitement I’d had with
the paintings of the Orient and the excitement I’d had with the nebula and explosions in space.
All I had to do was put them onto stronger colors that would vibrate against the color in the
background. That became the first transition. I also drew on an idea from early watercolors of
using dots as accents to enrich the color and to break up the solid wall of a background. I soon

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discovered these dots could give a kinetic movement to a painting that I could not find any other
way of doing.”
Kirkland explored different combinations to create after-images of
various kinds. His last paintings seem to fool the viewer‘s eye. We are
not sure if we are looking at a cosmos or at something under a
microscope. When he first started making dots over the top of his color
fields, Kirkland used all kinds of round objects from broken chair legs to
dowels. “In one background, I changed color from very dark green to a
very light yellow green. The red dots across the canvas were all the
same color, but different sizes: except they didn’t look the same.” A
vibration is what some of the dots seemed to create. Several of the dot
paintings were named ―Vibrations.‖
His assistant, Ron Babcock, likens Kirkland‘s creation of the canvases to watching a conductor
lead a mad dance. The oil and water mixtures would spread across the canvas and Kirkland
would scramble around using paper towels to soak up the moisture where he did not want it to
go. There was a percussive rhythm of dots moving across the canvas. He was like a conductor
with the dowels, sometimes having one in each hand and one in his mouth so he could do more
than one color at a time. Most of the time, Kirkland would be listening to music of some kind.
Kirkland‘s last group of paintings was full of energy. A critic stated, “…each of those dots is a
separate human, physical act and hence a separate intellectual act. One has to decide where it
goes, what color it is, how big it is, how it interacts with the myriad of dots around it, and in so
making this art there is an act of control which only a very mature artist, indeed a great artist,
can summon towards the end of his life.”
Kirkland died at the age of 76, in 1981. Although he had been ill for many years prior to his
death, he continued to paint. During the last three months of his life, he worked strapped to a
chair for support. He never wavered from “wanting each of my paintings to be better than the
last.” His wife preceded him in death. He had no children. No services were held. Kirkland
felt, “the paintings are enough.” He bequeathed a large collection of his works to the Denver Art
Museum and others to his friend, Hugh Grant who developed the Vance Kirkland Museum at his
old art school building, 1313 Pearl, in Denver.
Bibliography and web sites:
http://www.vancekirkland.org/home.html Denver Museum devoted to Kirkland’s works.
The Kirkland Gallery website offers the following links for more information:
www.westword.com/issues/1999-09-30/art.html
9/30/99 Westword, "Old Times" review of Vanguard Art in colorado: 1940-1970
www.westword.com/issues/1999-09-16/art.html
9/16/99 Westword, "Time Flies" review of Colorado Abstraction: 1975-1999 at Arvada Art
Center
www.westword.com/bod/1999/peopleindexfrm.html
1999 Westword, "Best of Denver Awards"
Blue Mysteries Near the Sun,
1976

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www.westword.com/bod/1998/artsentertainment/065.html
1998 Westword, "Best of Denver Awards"
www.westword.com/bod97/noframes/ae19.html
1997 Westword, "Best of Denver Awards"
Slides
1. Kirkland in his studio: 1980. Vance Kirkland is 75 years old in this picture. He
was born in 1904 in Ohio. He never shared much about his childhood, stating: “I
like the idea of where I am, not where I have been.” We do know that Kirkland‘s
father was a dentist and his mother created needlework pictures and was a good
cook. He studied art in college in Ohio.
Kirkland moved to Denver, Colorado when he was a young man and became
a well-known artist who painted large works of art. One of his paintings called a
―nebula‖ is shown in the background. Kirkland was considered a ―pioneering
artist‖ because he created new and different ways of expressing himself in
painting. He produced over 1000 paintings and 500 drawings.
2. Trout Stream: 1927, watercolor 15” x 20”. This traditional-style watercolor painting
shows Kirkland‘s mastery of color and depth. He devoted 27 years to painting in
watercolor. His earliest paintings were of Colorado scenes like this and of ghost
towns. (A ghost town is a town that has been abandoned and people don‘t live
there anymore.) Kirkland was hired as the head of Denver University‘s first
school of art about two years before he painted this painting.
3. The Life and Death of Rhubarb: 1936, watercolor, 30½” x 22½‖. Kirkland began
looking at nature from a different perspective rather than ―horizontal‖. This is a
view looking down at a plant. It gives us a hint of all the layers of life and death
that can be found all around us. Look at the different layers he created with the
changes in color.
4. View from a Falcon’s Wing: 1941, watercolor 22½” x 29”. The longer Kirkland did
watercolors, the more surrealistic his style became. Surrealistic art is described
as unreal or dreamlike pictures. In this painting, life forms can be imagined in the
clouds and the edges of the mountains. The picture has a motion or rhythm to it
created by the swirling shape of the clouds. Kirkland has been compared to van
Gogh because of paintings like this. He gives us another different perspective,
an aerial one, from the falcon‘s wing.

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5. Red Rocks and Chipmunk: 1946, watercolor and gouache, 16” x 22”. In this painting,
Kirkland put a very realistic looking chipmunk in a very surrealistic shrub. What
do you think the bulging shapes suggest? What colors has he used?
6. Prehistoric Motif: 1947, watercolor, 22” x 31”. In this picture, Kirkland turns a
landscape back millions of years. He suggests beings that might have roamed
Colorado then. Is this dinosaur-looking figure being created or destroyed?
7. Misty Day at Grand Lake: 1953, watercolor. This is one of the last traditional
watercolors that Kirkland did. It appears to be an Oriental-style painting; with
little reference to the time of day…the mountains seem to hang suspended. How
was Kirkland able to do the clouds?
8. Prairie Monuments: 1954, 36” x 48”. Kirkland was starting to break away from his
traditional watercolors but not nature scenes yet in this work. He wanted to be
able to paint on larger canvases without having to worry about the paper keeping
wet all the time. Kirkland seems to have joined together biology, history and
psychology in one setting. What are these shapes? Are they shrubs of the
prairie? Are they ghosts of the animals of the prairie? Are they tombstones or
monuments to the pioneers and Indians who walked upon the plains? Each
figure seems to have many shapes.
9. Uranium and Gold: 1955, oil and gold leaf on a panel, 31” x 22½”. After 1954, Kirkland
painted almost entirely abstracts. (Abstracts are considered to be ideas or thoughts about
something rather than a realistic picture of a thing.) Here, Kirkland has neatly summed up
part of the history of Western Colorado. In the early 1950‘s, Grand Junction and
this area was the center of economic activity because of the search for and
mining of uranium. The boom was similar to the gold rush early in Colorado
history. Both didn‘t last long. The ―mining‖ of oil shale that created the last
―boom and bust‖ is shown also in this picture.
This was a painting where Kirkland laid a combination of oil and water paint
on the surface of the canvas letting it go wherever it wanted. As the paint dried,
bubbles would appear and burst, sending out new colors from below…it was
almost like the painting had a life of its own.
10.Pompeiian Memory: 1955, oil and gold leaf, 27” x 36‖. Kirkland traveled all over the
world. He spent two months in Pompeii, at the site of an ancient city ruined by
the eruption of a volcano. What was Kirkland‘s impression of the site and the
event? This type of painting is called ―Abstract Expressionism‖, similar to
another artist we learned about this year, Frank Mechau. It is a picture of a
person‘s feelings about what they see rather than a realistic picture of what is
seen.

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11.Painting Number 3: 1960, oil on canvas, 36” x 41”. As Kirkland got older, his
canvases got larger. This is one of his ―floating abstractions‖. He made these
larger paintings while belts from the ceiling suspended him so that he could
reach the middle of the canvas. This would be like hanging from the ceiling on a
swing while painting. Does this painting suggest outer space or does it look
more like something you might see through a microscope? Kirkland gives us no
clues.
12.Red Vibrations in Phthalo Green Space: 1964, oil on canvas, 75” x 139” (or about 6½
ft by 11¼ ft) Kirkland began experimenting with large expanses of color, usually
created by still using his oil and water technique, but also overlaid with dots. The
dots were applied using different sized wooden dowels. The picture we have of
his painting here does not allow us to really see the depth and texture created by
the layers of dots he placed in different places. The dots give the painting a life
of its own because of the way our eyes view it differently each time.
13.Vibrations of Scarlet on Yellow-Green: 1968, oil on canvas, 75” x 139‖ This is
another of his huge paintings, if you were to see it at the art museum you would
notice it looks like it is going to leap off the wall at you. The painting looks this
way because the many dots make it appear to be moving. What shapes are
suggested in this painting? How?
14.Recent Dream of Space: 1974, oil and watercolor, 75” x 100”. This picture is a huge
area of color again created by the artist mixing oil paints and watercolor paints
together on the canvas and allowing them to go where they wanted. After the
paint dried, the artist went back and put brilliant multi-layered dots on it, which
adding a bit of control over how the picture ended up looking.
Kirkland died in 1981, when he was 76 years old. Although he had been
sick for many years, he continued to paint. He said he always wanted ―each of
my paintings to be better than the last.‖ He and his wife had no children. His
paintings were given to the Denver Art Museum and to a friend who opened a
special art museum of his work (also in Denver.)
PROJECTS/ENRICHMENT
Your school is supplied paper, brushes, liquid watercolor paint, and
salt You need to provide: small containers, crayons, and plastic
covers to protect the work area.
Note: Be frugal with the paint and glitter glaze – a little bit goes
a long way! Add water to the paint to thin it and ONLY USE THE TINY
AMOUNT NEEDED at a time, it is near to impossible to “re-pour” the
paint and glaze back into the bottle!

11. 11
BEFORE YOU BEGIN: Determine an area where the wet paintings can be left for
several hours to dry. Have students write their names on the bottom edge of their paper
before beginning.
TO EASE CLEANUP: We encourage you to set up workstations for the students. Your
challenge is to decide which period of Kirkland‘s art to concentrate on. An option is to
select a subject and have students choose their own style in which to render the idea.
LIQUID WATERCOLOR PAINT: Again, a little goes a long, long way! This paint is
highly concentrated: please dilute it at least 1:1, it can be diluted and used as a ‗wash‘
up to 4:1.
SALT: This is where the alchemy/science part comes into the project…however,
patience is required! Have the students use a tiny pinch of the salt –less is more—over
the wettest area of the painting and LET IT SIT (and sit and sit) until the painting is DRY.
Salt will concentrate the pigments of the paint into area of crystallized color, producing
some Kirkland-like effects.
CRAYONS: If you choose, students can scribble some designs on the paper before
painting. The waxy composition of the crayon adds one more ―resist‖ to the design.
Here are some tips that may make painting
easier (from A Survival Kit for the Elementary Art
Teacher by Helen Hume):
Do the painting project in warm weather, so you
can go outside! Paint on the grass rather than on the
gravel---the lawn gets mowed and the paint will disappear.
You may want to have students remove their shoes and
wear old clothes.
Clean up: Assign ―helpers‖ to get paint and water
prepared. Also assign ―helpers‖ to help wash brushes, etc.
at the end of the lesson. Preserve your sanity by avoiding
having students anywhere near a sink, unless assigned by you. Keep a pile of wet washcloths or
cut-up old towels in a bucket for clean up. If working outside, use a gallon ice-cream bucket (or
coffee can, etc.) for water. Have students place items to be washed into the bucket at the end of
lesson.
Painting without a sink in the classroom: baby food jars of paint, water are used and newspaper
or cardboard to cover the working surface. Keep 3 buckets available for clean-up: an empty
bucket for dirty water, a semi-clean water bucket for cleaning brushes and a clean water bucket
for rinsing hands.
ALTERNATIVE SUGGESTIONS
1. Mix tempera and oil (vegetable, mineral or baby oil) and apply to paper. How can you control the
movement? Add dots or other lines. Name what you created.
2. Think about and do an abstract of the universe, energy, explosions, quarks, galaxy, power,
volcanoes, and earthquakes. What colors and shapes do you use?
3. Paint a picture of a minute, tiny world of atoms or a gigantic world of galaxies and planets. Or, do
close-up studies of something on the ground outside.
4. Do a transition drawing like ―Life and Death of a Rhubarb‖ and show the different colors and states a
plant, animal or insect might go through.
Some Art Heritage
volunteers appear hesitant
to use paint, because they
feel “it’s too messy”! As
messy as painting is, it is
also a certainty that
student painting improves
as they have more
opportunities to do it!

12. 12
5. In the manner of ―Prairie Sentinels,‖ create a desert, canyon, plains, forest, etc. background and cut
out simple shapes from construction paper to go on it (almost like Matisse‘s shapes)
6. Use chalk or light colored paint on dark construction paper to create ghostly or surrealistic images.
7. Do a crayon (or Craypas) resist of a Colorado scene or a space scene.
8. Make a picture from a different perspective such as ―View from a Falcon‘s Wing‖. What about a
chipmunk‘s view?
9. Get some driftwood and either do a sketch or see what shapes they see in the wood and draw them
on paper.
10. Kirkland‘s ―Uranium and Gold‖ depicts things important to Colorado‘s past economy in the 1950‘s. Do
a similar expression of what was important in 1800, 1960, 1910, or 1990. (Indians, furs, water, fields,
skiing, fruit, coal, rafting, other tourism, etc.
11. Remember a trip you‘ve taken. Make an abstract painting that captures the colors and feelings you
remember.
12. Pick a site you are familiar with…downtown, Mt. Garfield, Grand Mesa, Colorado National Monument,
etc. Create a mood painting, using no lines, about the scene. What colors will you use?
13. Envision a stormy or foggy day and picture it. How are the light and colors different than they would
be in a picture of a sunny day?
SPIN ART Judith Walsh –Mt. Zion and Robertson Elementary Schools Suffolk, VA
Grade: K-6
Age: 4-12
What You Need:
salad spinner (about $2.oo in stores)
bottles of paint (washable tempera)
small paper plates 6" (or round coffee filters)
What You Do:
I have my salad spinner on a table in front of the room and then I call students, one at a time, to
come to the spinner. The other students are drawing whatever they like on a piece of paper.
They pick 3 colors and I pour them onto the paper plate that they have placed into the spinner.
Then they get to spin!
They have such fun! No one knows what the outcome will be until I lift the top off of the spinner
and then the ooohs and ahhhs begin!
These turn out beautifully! It is so much fun listening to the students talking about what they see
in their pictures. I have never seen a bad one!
Try this and your students will love it!

13. 13
Art Heritage Program
student reflection paper
We learned about Vance Kirkland in
Art Heritage. Kirkland was a
Colorado artist who lived from 1904
to 1981. He created paintings using a mixture of oil paints and
watercolor because he liked to see what would happen to his art when
the paints interacted.
How to Spot a “Kirkland”:
1. ______________________________________
_________________________________________
2. ______________________________________
3.
_______________________________________________
4. ____________________________________________
__________________________________________________
Student Name _____________________ Date ________