Painting

White Hawk's paintings function as sites of cultural continuity, where Indigenous visual languages inspire continued exploration and contemporary expression. Her works translate and extend the ritualized labor and artistic strength of Lakota practices into fields of saturated color and measured brushwork. Some compositions unfold through dense accumulations of fine, deliberate marks, whose rhythmic repetition recalls the visual tempo of Lakota quillwork and beadwork. Others privilege open space, subtle variations in texture, or shifts in scale, evoking the meditative qualities of compositional balance favored throughout Lakota aesthetics. 

White Hawk’s paintings serve as both formal investigations and acts of historical correction, demonstrating how Native women's innovations preceded and influenced the Western modernist movements that dominate art history. Her methodical application of paint mirrors the patient work that Indigenous women have practiced for generations, linking her studio practice to longstanding forms of cultural expression and intergenerational knowledge. Through saturated colors and geometric forms, White Hawk’s canvases reveal the conceptual depth of Native traditions in abstraction, prompting viewers to reconsider dominant narratives about American art.