Kay WalkingStick

From the mid-1970s WalkingStick shifted towards abstraction. In this critical period, WalkingStick’s paintings became increasingly geometric and minimalist.  Using her hands and a pallet knife to spread a mixture of acrylic paint and saponified wax on the canvases.  The thickly layered surfaces of these paintings are sculptural, creating a cartographic texture of ridges and valleys, suggesting geological formations or the earth seen far above.  As WalkingStick continued to explore conceptual ideas, she became fascinated by Native American histories and her own heritage.  

In the 1980s after spending time in the Colorado Rockies, WalkingStick became enamored with the rugged western landscape there. She felt compelled to depict it combining abstraction with landscape in pairs of paintings joined together as diptychs. These iconic two paneled works directly combine traditional modes of landscape painting with the formally American abstraction of New York. Each work holds a duality, WalkingStick states, ‘the diptych is an especially meaningful metaphor to express the beauty and power of uniting the disparate and this makes it particularly attractive to those of us who are biracial.  It also visualizes the connection between our sacred earth and the cosmos, reminding us of the need to protect our planet.’

In the 1990s WalkingStick lived in Rome for three semesters while teaching at Cornell University.  She traveled extensively and as one would expect, those travels had a profound effect on her work. During this time her experiences led her back to not only using brushes again, but also incorporating figures in her work – often dancing figures.  The golden interiors of the many churches led to her use of gold leaf referencing the spiritual or the unknown in a long series of paintings. 

In her most recent works, WalkingStick paints single viewpoint landscapes of non-industrial  America, reclaiming the land by overlaying the paintings with designs of the Native American people who have inhabited or live there now. Sublime vistas are painted in fluid brushstrokes with bands of traditional Native American patterning floating on the surface, as if protecting them.

WalkingStick’s practice is both a visual record of her experience on earth and her attempt to come to terms with Indian history that is such a crucial part of America's history. In these works of rich colors and bold forms there is a sense of ancestral presence and a deep connection to place.