Joan Arend Kickbush (March 23, 1926 – June 16, 2006) was a popular Alaskan artist. Her paintings and illustrations featured Alaska Native children, Yupik villagers and Arctic wildlife. She painted in watercolor and oil. Before moving to Anchorage in 1953, she was a commercial artist in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Hawaii. Once she settled in Anchorage, however, there was little opportunity for a commercial artist. She was a kindergarten teacher when she took an Alaskan teacher's tour to Kotzebue and Nome in 1955. From that time, she embarked on what became a career painting Alaska Native (Inupiat–Yupik) children. Her paintings of the "wide-eyed" children were popular, and journalist Phyllis Eilleen Lancaster stated that: "Her style is realistic, with the charm and appeal of Hummel figurines." At an exhibit in 1963 at the Alaska Art Gallery, 40 of her watercolors and oils of native children were shown. It was her first Interior Alaska art showing. Shed exhibited her work at the House of Wood, a local gallery in Fairbanks. The couple purchased a plane that Roland piloted so that they could travel to remote villages in Alaska. She made paintings in her studio of scenes she had sketched during their visits, and he matted and framed her works. The Siberian Yupik village of Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island was her favorite subject. At a United Nations tea in Anchorage in or before 1965, Hubert Humphrey's wife, Muriel Buck Humphrey, was given one of Kickbush's works. The Alaska Crippled Children's Association gave a painting to the head chaplain and it hung in his Washington D.C. office. The University of Wisconsin had her works in a permanent collection. An exhibition of her watercolor and oils was held at the Alaska Art Gallery in Fairbanks from November 18 to December 2, 1966. The Frye Art Museum in Seattle held an exhibition of Kickbush's works in November, 1977. It featured her paintings of Alaska Native children. At that time she and her husband were living in Bend, Oregon, and she made paintings from sketches she had previously made during visits to Alaskan villages. Her trademark technique was to "transfer the sketches to pressed board and after applying oils, uses a palette knife technique to produce a jewel-like finish;" Her oils obtained a matte finish through the use of artists' wax. During her career as a commercial artist she cleaned many brushes, so when she began working on her own she preferred the palette knife and only used a brush to sign a painting. Kickbush wrote and illustrated several coloring books that were popular with Alaska Natives because the images were so lifelike. She illustrated a textbook, This is Alaska, and created a line of stationery and Christmas cards. Kickbush worked in pastels, ink, charcoal and watercolors.