The Art of Belonging: How a Whittie Artist Connects With Landscape & Legacy
Linda Infante Lyons ’81 explores Alutiiq identity, Alaskan history and landscape through her luminous oil paintings
By Brandon Rosas with artwork courtesy of Linda Infante Lyons ’81
A dark-haired woman stands in a vast subarctic landscape, her face lit by a regal serenity, her body wrapped in the heavy fur parka traditional to her Alutiiq Alaska Native culture. Beyond her Indigenous language, she speaks only Russian, the language of her husband, an Estonian farmer with whom she raises six children in Karluk, a remote village overlooked by a blufftop Russian Orthodox chapel.
The woman is Katherine Reft, great-grandmother of Linda Infante Lyons ’81 and the inspiration for Infante Lyons’ painting “St. Katherine of Karluk,” the first in a series of symbolic oil portraits that explore the relationship between Indigenous and Western identities in the wake of Alaska’s colonization by Russia and the United States.
“Growing up, I knew that my family was Alaska Native,” says Infante Lyons, “but a lot of that culture was suppressed—or buried, really—and had to be dug up over time. I really wanted to explore the Alutiiq culture and its cosmology.”
Painted for a traveling exhibition titled “Decolonizing Alaska,” the piece incorporates elements of Alutiiq culture into the stylistic form of a Russian Orthodox icon. As in Western Madonna and Child paintings, Reft is crowned by a glowing halo, but rather than holding a human infant, she carries a seal pup.
“It’s not supposed to be the Christ child,” says the artist, “but a symbol of a reverence for the other creatures that the Alutiiq people considered their brothers and companions in their world.”
This respect for nature speaks powerfully to Infante Lyons, who has felt a deep connection to the outdoors since childhood.
“In the Alutiiq worldview, everything is divine and connected, and all things, animate or inanimate, contain a spark of divine energy,” she explains. “That aligns absolutely with my view of the world. Ever since I was little, running around in the woods, that’s how I saw everything. It was a revelation.”
“In the Alutiiq worldview, everything is divine and connected, and all things, animate or inanimate, contain a spark of divine energy. That aligns absolutely with my view of the world.
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—Linda Infante Lyons ’81
Finding Her Voice
For Infante Lyons, nature and art have been linked as long as she can recall.
“My mother created a very enriching environment for her children, and I remember a [John James] Audubon poster of a pair of mallard ducks on the wall next to my crib,” she says. “There’s a science aspect to it, but also some artistic license that Audubon took with his paintings. It stuck in my mind.”
When she wasn’t out collecting nests or plant specimens in the pockets of wilderness scattered across her hometown of Anchorage, Alaska, Infante Lyons could often be found “drawing on furniture and getting in trouble for it,” she recalls, “or in my notebooks instead of listening to the teacher.” It was a habit that extended into her time at Whitman College, where her Biology major provided ample opportunity to make illustrations in her notes. “I probably spent more time on my drawings than [studying],” she laughs.
Minoring in Spanish, she fell in love with the magical realist literature of Latin America, a genre that seamlessly integrates the natural and supernatural in a way that parallels how the Alutiiq see the interconnectedness of the universe. After graduating with her bachelor’s degree, she moved between the U.S. and Chile, working for two years as a lab technician in cancer research before focusing on raising her three daughters.
“It was strangely sort of a visual job,” Infante Lyons says of her work analyzing photos of chromosomes.
During six years as a stay-at-home mother, she continued to draw and paint, crystallizing her desire to forge an art career. When her youngest child was old enough to attend school, Infante Lyons enrolled in a fine arts school in Chile, where she created portraits of women and animals that were influenced by her love of nature as well as the magic realist and social realist art of Central America.
“It was a good place to get to know myself and find my voice, which I think is always the hardest thing for an artist,” she says. “If I look at the art I created as a kid, painting these surreal combinations of people and plants—it goes all the way back to that Audubon poster. It was already there.”
Cultivating Harmony
Since returning to Anchorage in 2001, Infante Lyons has focused her artistic energies increasingly on honoring the people and landscapes of Alaska. Her work can be found in the collections of Alaska Native corporations such as CIRI and Koniag, as well as in the permanent collections of the Anchorage Museum, the Alaska State Museum in Juneau, and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.
In both her icon portraits and her landscapes, “the aesthetics reflect a perception of interconnectedness and belonging,” Infante Lyons says, “even down to the level of the color choices creating a harmony that I imagine my ancestors must have felt in precolonial times, knowing they are just one element of the environment and not claiming any dominion over it.”
As she works, Infante Lyons contemplates this worldview, infusing it into the transcendent images she creates.
“When you’re a painter, you work alone, and it’s almost like being a monk,” she says. “You have time to really put things together and connect the dots. As I paint, I’m seeing how perhaps my work can symbolize, or at least meditate on, the question of who we are as humans in the environment, and how our place in the world can be one of positive impact.”
Follow the Artist
Linda Infante Lyons was recently named the Jeannette K. Watson Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities at Syracuse University. You can see more of her artwork on Instagram, on her website, or at her upcoming solo exhibition at the Bunnell Street Arts Center in Homer, Alaska, this July.
Three Generations of Whittie Women … & Counting
Linda Infante Lyons ’81 is part of a legacy of Whitman College graduates that goes back more than 60 years. Her mother, Carolyn Lyons ’57, who majored in Education, discovered the college after leaving Alaska’s rural Kodiak Island to attend a private high school in Seattle. And Infante Lyons’ daughter, Sofia Infante ’12, earned a Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology degree at Whitman on her way to becoming an OB-GYN in California.
“At Whitman, there’s a certain culture of dialogue and looking at the world in an intellectually open and creative way that I found very stimulating,” says Infante Lyons. “I can have these discussions with my mother about politics and things happening in the world, and she’s very interested. She’s 90 years old and very active.”
She sees her mother’s intellectual and community engagement as “a Whitman thing” they share.
“My daughter and son-in-law, Timothy Strother ’12, are typical Whitties too—very interesting people who are driven to understand the world intellectually. There are layers of Whitman graduates we know whose kids are friends with my kids. It’s quite a close-knit community, which is wonderful.”
First column (from top): 1. “Critters Creek” (oil on canvas). 2. “Inlet Blue” (oil on canvas). 3. “Kal’ut Madonna” (oil on panel).
Second column (from top): 4. “Qunukamken” (oil on panel). 5. “Sanctuary” (oil on canvas).
Third column (from top): 6. “St. Katherine of Karluk” (oil on panel). 7. “Taquka’aq, Sovereign of Kodiak Island” (oil on canvas).