Kay WalkingStick

(American | Cherokee, born 1935)

Artist Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee) creates landscape and abstract paintings that explore expressive and symbolic forms. She notes, "My paintings take a broad view of what constitutes Native American Art. My wish has been to express our Native & non-native shared identity... 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."

WalkingStick earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Beaver College in Pennsylvania and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York in 1975. Her artworks are in museums and collections across the U.S., including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., and many others. The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C. curated a retrospective of Kay WalkingStick's art in 2016 that toured the U.S. for two years.