Winter Flight

Kay WalkingStick, artist

Cultural affiliations: Cherokee

born 1935

Winter Flight, 1988–1989

Where object was made: United States

Material/technique: canvas; oil

Dimensions:
Object Height/Width/Depth (Height x Width x Depth): left 51.4 x 51.4 x 8.6 cm
Object Height/Width/Depth (Height x Width x Depth): 20 1/4 x 20 1/4 x 3 3/8 in
Object Height/Width/Depth (Height x Width x Depth): right 50.8 x 50.5 x 2 cm
Object Height/Width/Depth (Height x Width x Depth): 20 x 19 7/8 x 0 13/16 in

Credit line: Museum purchase: Peter T. Bohan Art Acquisition Fund

Accession number: 2003.0078.a,b

On display: Michaelis Gallery

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Label texts

Empowerment

“I think our earth is sacred. We are so much a part of this earth, evolved to live here, in this atmosphere. I also think that the shapes in the landscape are abstract enough so that they can carry implied meaning that I can impart through that. It’s transcendent in that it can refer to the unknown, those big questions of life—birth and death and our existence here on earth.”
— Kay WalkingStick

Additional label content:
Kay WalkingStick further discusses landscape paintings and ideas of place: “My paintings aren’t exact depictions of a place; they are based on the look and feel of a place,” she says. “Landscape paintings are depictions of nature re-organized by an artist. This is what landscape painters have always done.” Why do you think she might have organized this painting as a diptych, with two square canvases framed together in a landscape format? What do they suggest about a place and connections to this place by the artist?

Empowerment

Exhibition Label:
Exhibition Label:
"American Indian Art at the Spencer Museum," 6-Sep-2003 to 19-Oct-2003, Andrea Norris

The daughter of an Oklahoma Cherokee father and a Scotch-Irish mother, Kay WalkingStick first began seriously to consider her Cherokee heritage in the context of making art. Trained and educated in the Northeast, she teaches painting at Cornell University and has been exhibiting since 1975. In juxtaposing a representational image with a completely abstract one, WalkingStick suggests the dialogue between the tangible world and the abstract, spiritual life. This painting, which dates from the time of her husband’s death, may also refer to issues of life and death in the juxtaposition of turbulence and calm, broad gesture and solid flat surface, and black with rich colors.