Kay WalkingStick created Spirit Center II (1992) after visiting Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument in Arizona. The park houses the site of the last volcanic eruption on the Colorado Plateau in AD 1064. The rugged basalt rock, Pueblo cultural history of the region, and geological story of the landscape all inspired this artwork. Spirit Center II exemplifies WalkingStick’s use of the diptych to marry representation with abstraction and the material world with the spiritual world. WalkingStick has explained the relationship between the two sides of the composition in mythic terms: “One part is not the abstraction of the other, but the extension of the other. The two portions represent two kinds of knowledge of the earth. One is visual immediate, and particular, the other is spiritual, long-term, and nonspecific... that is, one side refers to the present while the other side refers to both the past and the future. These are not landscapes, but paintings about my view of the earth and its sacred quality.”
Kay WalkingStick
30 x 60 in. (76.2 x 152.4 cm)
Art Bridges
1992
Oil stick on paper mounted to canvas
AB.2026.28
Artist; (Hales Gallery, New York, NY); purchased by the John and Susan Horseman Collection, 2023