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Kay WalkingStick, Orilla Verde at the Rio Grande, 2012, oil on wood panel, left panel: 40 × 40 in. (101.6 × 101.6 cm) right panel: 40 × 40 in. (101.6 × 101.6 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2021.30.3, © Kay Walkingstick, 2016
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Artwork Details
- Title
- Orilla Verde at the Rio Grande
- Artist
- Date
- 2012
- Location
- Dimensions
- left panel: 40 × 40 in. (101.6 × 101.6 cm) right panel: 40 × 40 in. (101.6 × 101.6 cm)
- Copyright
- © Kay Walkingstick, 2016
- Credit Line
- Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- oil on wood panel
- Classifications
- Highlights
- Subjects
- Landscape — New Mexico
- Landscape — river — Rio Grande
- Object Number
- 2021.30.3
Artwork Description
A preeminent figure in American and Native American art, Kay WalkingStick is known for landscape paintings that imbue place with spiritual weight and cultural memory.
Orilla Verde at the Rio Grande depicts a ridge along the Rio Grande River in New Mexico that the artist visited in 2011. WalkingStick later saw Ancestral Pueblo ceramic vessels from the same area in the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.
She completed her painting by stenciling patterns inspired by the design on these pots across its surface. Her gesture is a declaration of Indigenous presence and persistence, marking the depicted territory as Native land.
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