Frieze Masters | Booth D10: Kay WalkingStick
Booth D10
14 - 18 October 2025
Regent's Park, London, UK
For the 2026 edition of Frieze Masters, Hales is proud to exhibit a solo presentation of 1970s to 1980s abstractions by celebrated American artist Kay WalkingStick (b. 1935 Syracuse, NY), marking her first solo project in the United Kingdom and following her inclusion in the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, WalkingStick's solo exhibition, Kay WalkingStick / Hudson River School, originating at The New York Historical, is currently touring the United States.
The presentation includes rarely seen works from the late 1970s to early 1980s, a period of extraordinary creative development in which WalkingStick forged a distinct visual language. Drawing on her study of Native tipi structures and the shapes created by their drapes, WalkingStick situated her compositions within geometric forms and grids. Working directly with her hands, she imbued the paintings with a sensuality and expressive gesture by progressively building thick, richly coloured impasto surfaces through layers of acrylic and wax medium. The addition of wax, in her words, "gave the manmade acrylic a warm, natural look" [Kay WalkingStick, 2015]. Through this accumulation of material and the depth of the canvases themselves, the paintings became muscular, sculptural objects, which WalkingStick incised with a woodcutter's tool to reveal vibrant layers of colour beneath.
The arc shape seen throughout WalkingStick's paintings and drawings from this period, seemingly suspended on and within the surface, became a recurring motif she would explore with progressive complexity and rigour. WalkingStick cut into the surface of works such as Solstice (1981) and Equinox (1983) to reveal these semicircular forms and gridded lines, allowing earlier layers to emerge. In Cool-Warm/Warm-Cool (1979), the artist's first diptych of its kind and a precursor to a defining format in her practice, the arc form developed as raised ridges created by affixing additional swatches of canvas in relief with modelling paste and filling the resulting crevice with medium and heavy acrylic gel. Sculpting the surfaces and edges of her paintings allowed WalkingStick to instil in the abstractions suggestions of landscape and geology, anticipating her deeper engagement with the natural world in the years that followed.
WalkingStick is currently featured in thematic presentations at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; the James Museum, FL; the Frye Art Museum, WA, the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian, Washington D.C.; and the Pheonix Art Museum, AZ among others. WalkingStick has been included in exhibitions at many institutions, including The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; New York Historical Society, NY; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, AR; Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, IN; Allentown Art Museum, PA; Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ; Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma; Kalamazoo Institute of Art, MI; Dayton Art Institute, OH; Heard Museum, Phoenix, AR; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA; the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; and the National Gallery of Canada, ON.
WalkingStick's works are held in many institutional collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; New York Historical Society, NY; National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian, Washington DC; Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma; Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ; Detroit Institute of Arts, MI; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; Denver Art Museum, CO; Saint Louis Art Museum, MO; Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS; and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA.
