The Collection

Kay WalkingStick, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is one of the most celebrated Native American artists of her generation. Over a career spanning more than seven decades, she has developed a distinctive body of work that explores the American landscape as both a site of personal meaning and a symbol of shared history. Her paintings, drawings, and diptychs unite abstraction with representation, often layering vistas of mountains, rivers, and seas with patterns derived from Native traditions, creating works that hold in balance the physical and the spiritual, the personal and the collective.

Educated at Beaver College (now Arcadia University, BFA, 1959) and Pratt Institute (MFA, 1975), WalkingStick first gained recognition in the 1970s for her tactile abstractions of paint mixed with wax, applied with her hands and palette knife. In the 1980s, her time in the Colorado Rockies inspired a pivotal shift toward landscape, frequently expressed through diptychs that juxtapose painterly realism with abstract fields or patterning. She has described the diptych as a metaphor for uniting disparate parts—reflecting her biracial Cherokee/Anglo heritage as well as the dualities inherent in human experience.

Her work expanded in the 1990s to incorporate figurative elements, gold leaf, and references to mythology and spirituality, influenced by time spent living in Rome. In her more recent paintings, WalkingStick presents sublime single-viewpoint landscapes overlaid with Native American motifs, reclaiming the land as sacred while emphasizing shared human responsibility to protect it. She has said of her practice: “This is our beloved land, no matter who walks here, no matter who ‘owns’ it. Recognize us and honor this land.”

WalkingStick’s career has been recognized with major exhibitions, including Kay WalkingStick: An American Artist (National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C., touring 2015–2018) and Kay WalkingStick / Hudson River School (New-York Historical Society, 2023–24; Addison Gallery of American Art, 2024–25). In 2024, she was included in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.

Her work is held in over 60 museum collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Denver Art Museum, The Detroit Institute of Arts, The Israel Museum, The National Gallery of Canada, and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.

WalkingStick taught painting and drawing at Cornell University from 1988 until her retirement as Professor Emerita in 2005.