the green paint a cartographic texture of subtle ridges and valleys. The arc, a shape that repeats in this painting four times, was a focus of her work throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Some primitivist readings sug- gested that the arcs in her work “danced” or referenced the “bow.” In other cases feminist writers saw the shapes as renditions of the fe- male anatomy. It is obvious that at a time rife with political protest these ideas could easily be associated with the artist and her work.


20 AMERICAN INDIAN FALL 2015


For the artist, the arc was a geometrical form, a segment of a circle. Whether they are meditative, pictographic


or feminist, these ambiguous shapes provoke inquiry. Rich colors and bold hard-edged forms attract the viewer while the title ignites intrigue about the story of Sakajeweha, Chief Joseph, John Ridge and other key figures in American history. WalkingStick’s paintings were an overt attempt to come to terms with a history that was forgotten or ignored.


After a decade of abstraction, the pivotal


experience of living in the Rocky Mountains while a resident artist at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo., led the artist to reconsider her abandonment of the landscape. Even as a young girl she was enraptured with the beauty of the valleys and hills near her childhood home in Syracuse, N.Y., longing to capture it through painting. By the mid-1980s this pas- sion led to the creation of the work for which she is best known, her iconic two-paneled


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