Solstice, 1981, acrylic & wax on canvas, 48”h x 48”w Available at June Kelly Gallery, NYC Artwork and text © Kay WalkingStick 2019 Any use without written permission from Kay WalkingStick is strictly prohibited.

From The New York Times
June 19, 1981

By Vivien Raynor

"Kay WalkingStick's canvases seem less sexual in connotation than they were, perhaps because the reviewer was seeing them for the first time out of a feminist group context. Until recently, Miss WalkingStick – the name is Cherokee – has worked on two layers of canvas, applying a thick mixture of encaustic and acrylic with her fingers. As the earlier works here show, the effect is of coarse, ark animal hide incised with one or two slits and scored with lines. Now that the artist is working on paper glued to board and is laying on thinner pigment with a knife, the paintings have acquired a greater, though more mysterious power. Though smaller than before, they seem to have maintained – even gained – scale. Their leaden complexions tinged with green, red, brown, and blue, are of a rich, enameled quality, and the lozenge-shaped openings, treated in subtly contrasting hues, now look more like objects floating in space than lesions. This is intense and very promising work."