Joan Arend Kickbush, born March 23, 1926 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Wisconsin

Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...

 and died June 16, 2006 in Delafield, Wisconsin, was a popular Alaska

Alaska

Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...

 artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

 focusing on Alaska Native

Alaska Natives

Alaska Natives are the indigenous peoples of Alaska. They include: Aleut, Inuit, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Eyak, and a number of Northern Athabaskan cultures.-History:In 1912 the Alaska Native Brotherhood was founded...

 children, Arctic

Arctic

The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...

 wildlife

Wildlife

Wildlife includes all non-domesticated plants, animals and other organisms. Domesticating wild plant and animal species for human benefit has occurred many times all over the planet, and has a major impact on the environment, both positive and negative....

, and Yupik villagers.

Life

Kickbush attended Milwaukee State College and the Layton School of Art

Layton School of Art

The Layton School of Art was a third level institute based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was established by Charlotte Partridge and Miriam Frink in 1920 and closed as a result of financial insolvency in 1974. At its closure, the school was regarded as one of the top five art schools in the United...

 at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. In 1954, Kickbush and her husband, Roland, moved to Anchorage

Anchorage, Alaska

Anchorage is a unified home rule municipality in the southcentral part of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is the northernmost major city in the United States...

, Alaska where they both worked as a teachers and Kickbush painted. The Siberian Yupik

Siberian Yupik

Siberian Yupiks, or Yuits, are indigenous people who reside along the coast of the Chukchi Peninsula in the far northeast of the Russian Federation and on St. Lawrence Island in Alaska. They speak Central Siberian Yupik , a Yupik language of the Eskimo–Aleut family of languages.They were also...

 village of Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island

St. Lawrence Island

St. Lawrence Island is located west of mainland Alaska in the Bering Sea, just south of the Bering Strait, at about 63°30' North 173°20' West. The village of Gambell is located on the northwest cape, from the Chukchi Peninsula in the Russian Far East. The island is part of Alaska, but closer to...

 was her most popular subject.

In 1975 Kickbush and her husband left Alaska to live in the Lower 48 states including Oregon

Oregon

Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 and Arizona

Arizona

Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...

. They eventually returned to her home state of Wisconsin. Kickbush continued to create art that expressed her love of Alaska and her new locales. She died near Milwaukee at age 80.

Art

With few art galleries operating in Alaska early in her career, Kickbush exhibited her work in bank lobbies, craft shows, and the Westward Hotel in Anchorage. In 1964 she began exhibiting at the House of Wood, a local gallery in Fairbanks

Fairbanks, Alaska

Fairbanks is a home rule city in and the borough seat of the Fairbanks North Star Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska.Fairbanks is the largest city in the Interior region of Alaska, and second largest in the state behind Anchorage...

 which continued to carry her work through the early 1990s.

Rather than painting with a brush, Kickbush used a palette knife, using the same palette knife for 25 years. Many of her paintings were framed by her husband using wood and burlap. She was known for her oil painting on masonite and watercolors, and influenced many later Alaska artists, such as Rie Muñoz and Barbara Lavallee.

Museum collections

Joan Kickbush's work can be found in the collection of most Alaskan museums, including University of Alaska Anchorage

University of Alaska Anchorage

The University of Alaska Anchorage is the largest school of the University of Alaska System, with about 16,500 students, about 14,000 of whom attend classes at Goose Lake, its main campus in Anchorage....

which has the painting "Striving" as part of its Sam McClain collection.

Writing

Kickbush also wrote and illustrated several children's books:

• Life in an Eskimo Village: A cut-out and color book, 1959
• Esko the Eskimo, 1974
• Granny Moose and Her Red Caboose, 2003

External links

• Art Sample from 1966