Cherokee painter Kay WalkingStick’s work centers around the metaphorical significance of America’s landscape, which sustains humankind physically and spiritually. The varied representations of landscape in WalkingStick’s art are the thread that weaves together the many painterly directions her work has taken throughout her career. Her creative process includes spending time sketching and taking photographs in places across the country that inspire her, then researching the Indigenous history of those locations. The last piece of each painting is to stencil an Indigenous pattern, “literally marking the depicted land as Native land. It is a declaration of Indigenous presence and persistence.”
Source: Smithsonian American Art Museum
Headshot courtesy of Julia Maloof Verderosa
Website
http://www.kaywalkingstick.com
