Vance Kirkland

A wiry man crosses an intermediate measure of sand.
He carries an easel and watercolors.
He opens his sketchpad to charcoal gesture sketch
     a seagull on an outcropping.
He is Vance Kirkland, an artist of the timberline,
seeking a castle to deconstruct. He stands before the last painting
of his Surrealist Period, beginning 1940. In Prairie Monuments,
ghost lines dance somewhere among shadow and shape.
Kirkland's images weld the conceptual curl of metal to open sky.

The prairie began my previous exhibition yet could lead
somewhere else.
     Little men without names are jumping out of windows.
They are landing in cups of poor design.
Luminous little men are asking for saucers.
I am eroding into islands in order to escape.
I enter the labyrinth of my latest series. Paint under my eyes,
clouds overhead, I walk a tapestry of avenues.