Let’s Walk West looks at Brad Kahlhamer’s rambling journey into his Native American heritage and the landscape of the West. His paintings are part visionary, part pop culture. Eagles, coyotes and javelinas appear like talismans, alongside caricatures of family and friends. An artist and alternative-country musician, Kahlhamer is a storyteller at heart: he paints a world of personal rediscovery that spins wildly on its axis. Born in Tucson of Native American parentage, Kahlhamer was adopted as an infant and raised in
Tucson, then rural Wisconsin. He has tried to reconnect with Native culture yet, like other such adoptees, remains inevitably on the sidelines. His paintings arm-wrestle with an unknown autobiography, with people and places both real and imagined.