Rick Bartow

Coyote and Leda

Coyote appears in the stories of many different Indigenous communities as a trickster: a shapeshifting mischief-maker. Coyote helps maintain cosmic balance; it can teach meaningful lessons or cause trouble. Wiyot artist Rick Bartow includes Coyote in his art to suggest transformation, a theme that recurs throughout his drawings, sculptures, and masks. In this work, Coyote peers into the human world, separated only by a thin dotted line. The title refers to Leda, a figure from Greek mythology. Zeus seduced Leda—represented by the central figure in the composition—by disguising himself as a swan, which Bartow reimagines in this work as Coyote. Bartow ties together these two distinct cultural archetypes of trickery and deception.