Painting the mythic

Painter Kay WalkingStick has always thought of herself as an artist, even before the gallery shows and write-ups in prestigious publications.

"As far as I was concerned, my career started when I was in college. I had a clear idea I was an artist, I didn't have a clear idea of me as a painter," said WalkingStick, who is also an art professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

WalkingStick would spend the next three decades defining herself as a painter, the results of which can be see in a retrospective of WalkingStick's work on display at the Southeast Missouri Regional Museum in Memorial Hall, room 122, starting today and lasting until Nov. 21.

An opening reception is planned for 4 p.m. Oct. 22 at the museum and WalkingStick will give a gallery talk at 4:30 p.m.

"She's somebody whose work I have really respected and admired for 20 years," said museum director Dr. Stanley Grand.

A native of Ithaca, WalkingStick grew up with two uncles and a brother who were artists, although she did not get involved in art herself until she entered Beaver College in Glenside, Pa.

In 1959, WalkingStick received her bachelor of fine arts degree from Beaver College and went on to receive a master of fine arts degree from the Pratt Institute in New York City in 1975.

In the years between undergraduate and graduate school, WalkingStick worked on breaking into the New York art world, something she found especially difficult for a young woman in the 1960s. She had her first New York exhibit in 1969, 10 years after she graduated from college.

"It was very difficult," she said. "Pretty, young things couldn't be taken seriously."

While she was getting her master's degree, WalkingStick got married and had two children, which some people in the art world saw as a strike against her.

"Somebody, for instance, called me a dilettante because I had children and I couldn't be serious about my artwork," WalkingStick said.

Despite the roadblocks, WalkingStick eventually managed to have her paintings exhibited in galleries and museums around the country in both solo and group shows. In 1990 she had a traveling retrospective of her work.

WalkingStick said her work in the 1970s was full of hard-edged figures and flat colors. Then, from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, her work emphasized tactile senses through her use of dense acrylic paint and wax, both of which she applied with her hands.

She has also done a long series of diptychs, which is one painting displayed in two separate panels, where she has combined landscapes with abstract forms. Then in 1996 she started working with the human figure in her paintings.

No matter what the style of WalkingStick's paintings, however, she has approached it with great thought and consideration.

"I don't paint quickly," she said. "My paintings are very layered and I would hope they convey a lot of ideas to people. Paintings are about visual ideas."

WalkingStick said her paintings generally deal with the mythic, or things that are unknowable and that we do not understand. Of Cherokee Indian decent, WalkingStick has also addressed Native American history in her artwork, but said most of her work addresses the human experience, not just the Native American experience.

"It's not about being an Indian, it's about being a human," she said.

For Grand, a big part of WalkingStick's appeal is that her work reflects a lifetime journey.

"This is the work of an adult. She's now 69 years old, she has lived through a lot," Grand said. "She's lived a very full life and the paintings track this rich experience."

kalfisi@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182

WANT TO GO?

What: Kay WalkingStick: Mythic Dances, Paintings from Four Decades

When: Oct. 8 to Nov. 21; opening reception 4 to 6 p.m. Oct. 22

Where: Southeast Missouri Regional Museum, Memorial Hall, room 122

Info: (573) 651-2260