Notes by Charles Froelick, July 2024: Rick Bartow made countless depictions of the canine family including dogs and coyotes, and this is a rare work where he identifies the subject as wolf. In this self portrait Bartow seems to carry the wolf and in a transformative state and gesture he is communicating with it. Bartow often referenced sweat lodge, ceremony and pow-wow with by adding the words chant, song, and dance to artwork titles. Bartow portrays himself here with a red nose, it was his common self identifier reflecting on his years of alcohol abuse and recovery/sobriety. He quit drinking in 1979 and remained sober until his death in 2016, but he declaired that the demons of addiction always haunted him. Wiyot cultural and environmental history tell of a significant grove of Sitka Spruce trees and village site - Mouralherwaqh, also known as “wolf’s house.” Bartow made several works with Wolf, Bear and Turtle- recognizing the three clans of the Oneida - one of the six nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy. In 2011 Bartow wrote: "Coyote, Witkol in Wiyot language, is what he/she is, a teacher of the highest order. Coming or going we learn and see our good nature and our bad habits in one character." After our conversation I had a strong intuition that there was an important clue right in front of my eyes that I hadn’t yet figured out… so I kept digging …
The script written throughout the composition are mostly fragments and obscured. Several words appears at the top, right above the wolf's head, in both black and white paint. Bartow smudged the letters and overlapped them a bit, the black words are not totally legible, but the white paint appears to read "Hyacinth" or "Macbeth." There is a wolf reference in Macbeth, and Bartow did make many works inspired by/titled Macbeth throughout his career. The name Hyacinth is a direct reference to one of Rick's very close friends. Bartow made many works in homage to Hyacinth Joe David who is a reveered Nuuh-chah-nulth artist and who helped Bartow with large carving projects. Hyacinth Joe David’s family crest is the wolf, and the Wolf Dance is one of the central winter ceremonies and passage rights for young men of the Nuuh-chah-nulth (formerly known as Nootka).