July 2, 2021 First Friday: Linda Infante Lyons

The intention of my work is to create contemporary Indigenous icon imagery, recover and elevate the beliefs of Alaska Native people as equal to those of the Western world. My paintings of Alaska landscapes and other subjects such as seals and ice represent the connection to the environment of the subjects in these portraits. 

During the long introspective period of the pandemic lockdown, my mind wandered to landscapes visited long ago, Costa Rica, the Galapagos Islands and Chile.  Some of my paintings will reflect these places. Having witnessed the pain and suffering of the most vulnerable in 2020, my work may suggest the warm embrace of refuge and care. In all my paintings, I invite the observer to quiet the mind and consider the belief that all things, living and inanimate are instilled the light of divine energy.  

Biography
Linda Infante Lyons is a visual artist from Anchorage, Alaska. Her family is of Alutiiq/Sugpiaq Alaska Native heritage from Kodiak Island. She earned a BA at Whitman College, WA and studied art at the Viňa del Mar Fine Arts School in Chile. She has been exhibiting her work for over 20 years. 

Linda’s work can be found in permanent collections including the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH, the Anchorage Museum, the Alaska State Museum, the Alaska Contemporary Art Bank, the Alutiiq Museum and Archeological Repository, Kodiak, AK, the Museum of the North, Fairbanks, AK, and the Pratt Museum in Homer, AK.

Linda has received various awards including a 2020 Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant, a 2020 and 2017 Rasmuson Foundation Fellowship, a Santa Fe Arts Institute Fellowship and a Native Arts and Cultures National Artist Fellowship. 

Linda lives in Anchorage, Alaska with her husband, British artist, Graham Dane.