KAY WALKINGSTICK

– KAY WALKINGSTICK –

Cherokee, 1935–

Kay WalkingStick is a member of the Cherokee Nation whose rich heritage significantly influences her artistic vision. WalkingStick received a BFA from Beaver College (now Arcadia University) Glenside, PA in 1959 and an MFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY in 1975. The artist’s early work was heavily focused on representational work, specifically on the human body and figure. As she began to delve further into her own Native American heritage and explore a variety of mediums, her work began shifting towards abstraction, creating a unique style that blends abstract forms with cultural symbolism. This work, primarily done in the last quarter of the 20th century, shows WalkingStick’s deliberate and emotive sensibility. The artist masterfully handles material while forming a minimal and subtle vocabulary that addresses cultural issues through her distinctive technique and the art movements that she was exposed to.

WalkingStick's later work features landscapes and abstract representations that reflect her deep connection to her Indigenous roots. Her work has been widely exhibited in major institutions, including Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum, Montclair Art Museum, the Minneapolis Museum of Art and the Nasher Museum of Art. WalkingStick’s retrospective, Kay WalkingStick: An American Artist, at The National Museum of the American Indian, toured the United States to the Heard Museum, Dayton Art Institute, Gilcrease Art Museum, Kalamazoo Institute of Art and Montclair Art Museum (2015-2018). The artist’s most recent exhibition at the New York Historical Society, Kay WalkingStick / Hudson River School, epitomizes the artist’s melding of landscape and traditional Indigenous abstraction. 

WalkingStick's work is held in the permanent collections of many major institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Peabody Essex Museum, the Denver Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Albright-Knox Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art, among many others.