Best Painting Solo -- Old Master Division

To organize Vance Kirkland, Asian Paintings, a breathtaking show displayed late last summer, Hugh Grant, the director of the Vance Kirkland Foundation, which is the keeper of the late Denver artist's legacy, selected a combination of Kirkland's 1940s surrealist landscapes, and his abstract-expressionist paintings from the 1950s and '60s. Grant calls them Asian paintings not because they recall spots in Asia, but because Kirkland's travels in Asia led him to certain colors and concepts that he used for these pieces.