In Big Wolf Dancer, Rick Bartow presents a rare and deeply personal self-portrait in which he appears bound to the wolf in a moment of transformation and communication. While Bartow frequently depicted dogs and coyotes, this is one of the few works in which he identifies the animal specifically as wolf—a figure tied to ceremony, endurance, and spiritual lineage. The pose suggests exchange rather than control, positioning the wolf as both guide and witness.

Bartow often referenced sweat lodge, ceremony, and pow-wow through words such as chant, song, and dance, and this work operates in that register. His red nose, a recurring self-identifier, reflects his long struggle with alcoholism and his hard-won sobriety after 1979, a condition he described as ongoing rather than resolved. Fragmented text drifts through the composition, including veiled literary and personal references—one alluding to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, another to a close friend, collaborator, and source of support in Bartow’s recovery whose family crest is the wolf. Grounded in Wiyot cultural history, where “Wolf’s House” names an important village and ceremonial site, Big Wolf Dancer frames transformation as a lifelong practice of listening, carrying, and moving in step with what endures.