Kay WalkingStick is available for critiques in the New York Area.
Email kw44@cornell.edu if you are interested in more information.

  

I initially painted landscape in the mid 1980s. My question then was, what does landscape visually imply? What does the earth convey to us metaphorically, and how can I use this visual trope to express my personal take on our late 20th c. experience? I continue to explore these questions but their meanings have seemed to change as I change. About seven years ago I realized that the landscapes depicted in my paintings had become a stand-in for my body, especially in works like “Four Directions/Stillness” and “Venere Alpina”. Although, all painting is a portrait of the artist to some extent, once I had come to this understanding of body, I felt justified to include figures in my work. The move to figures seemed inevitable although I hadn’t depicted humans in my paintings for many years. In fact, their absence had seemed crucial to the significance of the work. It had been the uninhabited landscape I had sought in relation to the eternal. In my present work it is the golden skies that refer to the eternal, and therefore the paintings remain about the unknowable – the mythic.

I spent extended periods in Rome in 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2003. While in Italy, I sketched the Italian Alps as well as the classic sculpture and painting. In ‘98 I also had the honor of closely examining an Aztec Codex in the Vatican Library. I was seeing figurative art everywhere as well as admiring the landscape. The Alps are different in appearance from our Rockies, but they were nevertheless sacred to their original inhabitants and like all mountains embody chthonic energy in their skyward thrust.

One of the constants in my artwork is the emphasis on touch, which is sometimes expressed through the material itself, and other times through the image that suggests the physical feel of a body or a place. The memory of touch, that kinesthetic memory of how touch feels is a part of our mind’s imaging of physical activity. Touch is suppressed in our western culture to our great loss, for it is a basic human need. The earlier paintings have a dense acrylic and wax surface on one side, and oil on the other, both of which I painted with my hands. Today I am using a very loose oil paint applied with brushes but the message continues to be as much in the paint surface as in the imagery.

The idea of two parts working together in a dialogue has also remained interesting to me. I have often puzzled over the reason for my continued fascination. Primarily, the diptych is an especially powerful metaphor to express the beauty and power of uniting the disparate and this makes it particularly attractive to those of us who are biracial. But it is also a useful construct to express the conflicts and bivalence of everyone’s life. So there is a duality implied even when the work is not physically a diptych as in “ACEA VIII” or “Il Sogno II”.

Another constant is the filter of memory which simplifies and focuses content. The landscape is based on site sketches and photos, and the figures from imagination, so these are neither a depiction of a specific place nor an activity, but a suggestion of how a place and an activity would feel. They describe a psychological state.

My paintings take a broad view of what constitutes Native American Art. My wish has been to express our Native & non-native shared identity. We humans of all races are more alike than different, and it is this shared heritage, as well as my personal heritage I wish to express. I want all people to hold onto their cultures – they are precious – but I also want to encourage a mutual recognition of shared being. My goal has always been to paint about who I am as a 20th/21st century artist, and also as a Native American. My thoughts on our native history filled my work for many years. Today, I deal with feelings and thoughts common to all. I would hope that these paintings encourage the viewer to see our shared humanity in all of its gritty, frightening, awkward, sexy, funny and beautiful commonality.




Artwork and text © Kay WalkingStick 2007
Any use without written permission from Kay WalkingStick is strictly prohibited.