Kay WalkingStick
Fantasy for a January Day
1970
Scroll
Kay WalkingStick
Fantasy for a January Day
1970
Physical Qualities
Acrylic on canvas, 50 × 56 in. (127 × 142.2 cm.)
Credit Line
Purchase with exchange funds from the Pearlstone Family Fund and partial gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
Object Number
2020.53
Silhouettes of human figures in vivid colors recline across the scene in Fantasy for a January Day. Kay WalkingStick upends Western, Euro-centric art historical expectations that art depict nudes as female, most often created by men. In an expression of her own desire, the artist painted male nudes from her personal female gaze.
The abstracted figures of this work respond to the sexual revolution of the 1970s. WalkingStick emphatically states that this painting speaks to her concerns as a feminist rather than her Native identity. She says, “I am a fuller individual than simply a Native person. We are all more than just our race.”
The Baltimore Museum of Art by purchase, 2020; June Kelly Gallery, New York
Christopher Bedford, Asma Naeem, and Katy Siegel, "Now is the Time: Recent Acquisitions to the Contemporary Collection," Baltimore Museum of Art, May 2-July 18, 2021
Darienne Turner and Leila Grothe, "Preoccupied: Indigenizing the Museum," Baltimore Museum of Art, May 12-Dec. 1, 2024
Darienne Turner and Leila Grothe, "Preoccupied: Indigenizing the Museum," Baltimore Museum of Art, May 12-Dec. 1, 2024
Artist
Kay WalkingStick
1934–2000
(Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma) b. 1935, Syracuse, New York, U.S.A.
Meet Kay WalkingStick