Maidu and Pit River artist and activist Judith Lowry has devoted much of her artistic career to visualizing the stories which were passed down to her by her family and community members as well as recording her own family history through a crisp figurative style.¹ Her work often confronts the challenges facing Native people today and the stereotypes with which Native individuals and communities continue to grapple. Lowry, who is now based in Nevada City, California, frequently uses the proceeds of her paintings to fund historical and cultural preservation projects in the region. The artist has been actively working with the Nisenan people, who are traditionally based in the gold fields of California, in their effort to regain Federal recognition and uphold their cultural heritage. In her engagement with the Nisenan community, Lowry has helped local artists to work with the community’s elders in order to record and visualize oral traditions, a project that is emblematic of her striving toward cross-cultural connection and understanding in both her activism and artistic output.

      In *The Obedient Wives*, Lowry depicts the dramatic conclusion of a Northern California oral story about a wrestling match between the elder Rat, Joom-bom, and the juvenile Weasel, Weh-bo-sim.² The Weasel has won the battle and watches the scene play out from the corner of the work (fig. 1). Meanwhile, the Rat’s three blind wives, the Owls, have set him—and his once-lusciously furry tail—on fire after they mistake him for dinner. Narratives such as this, Lowry notes, are not sacred stories, but rather the Creation stories and character-building fables of the Maidu people; the depiction of these tales serves the dual purpose of sharing and preserving them. In creating works such as The *Obedient Wives*, Lowry draws from a cosmopolitan range of influences. The artist’s father, who is of Maidu, Pit River, Washo, and Irish-German descent, served as an officer in the US Army, and Lowry spent a significant portion of her childhood traveling in Europe, Japan, and the United States with her brother and Euro-Australian mother. Early exposure to the work of Italian Renaissance painters such as Sandro Botticelli and Fra Angelico in Europe greatly informed her work, and here, those influences play out in the skillful draftsmanship of the figures and tableau-like composition of the painting—a trademark of artist’s output. The deft rendering of the movement of the three owls recalls the churning figures so often found in Botticelli's work depicting Greek gods, with their zephyr-caught draperies reimagined as sweeping feathers.

      Equally as important, Lowry notes the influence of fellow Maidu artists Harry Fonseca and Frank Day. While she never met Day, his figurative paintings depicting Maidu narratives are particularly relevant in relation to works such as *Obedient Wives*, which also seeks to capture the rich visual underpinnings of Northern California oral traditions.³ With Fonseca, Lowry shares a sense of playful humor, often using disarming imagery to grapple with otherwise serious themes. The immediate accessibility of Lowry’s visual language, like that of both Day and Fonseca, invites viewers across cultural backgrounds to engage the themes of her work. And, critically, the deeply rooted connection to the Indigenous history of California in Lowry’s paintings acts as a complement to the global influences of her style.

¹ For an overview of Lowry’s work, see Lucy Lippard, Illuminations: Paintings by Judith Lowry, (Santa Fe: Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, 1999).

² Author’s conversation with the artist, April 3, 2022.

³ On the importance of Day to the work of both Lowry and Fonseca, see Rebecca J. Dobkins, “The Work and Influence of Maidu Painter Frank Day,” in* American Indian Art Magazine* 23, no. 4 (Autumn 1998): 55-68.


Image courtesy Judith Lowry.