The Witches Series

I have been debating about whether to create a new gallery for this new series I am working on or just how to include them on my website. I have ultimately decided the best way to present them is through blog posts, as each painting has a story to tell, which isn't conducive to the gallery format.
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The Witches
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For many years when someone talks about witches, we picture these old ladies dressed in black with a pointy hat and shoes. You know the image. Disney further ingrained it into our visual memory. But the reality of the Scottish witch trials was a persecution of women. Young women, old women. Women who had power or status. Women who refused to believe in the new religion being forced onto society. Women whose husbands wanted new wives. Women who had psychic or healing abilities. Herbalists, midwives, and women who made potions. They looked like you or me. 

My series ‘Witches’ is imaginary depictions of women who were persecuted for being witches, and the flimsy reasons for the accusations. These women didn’t dress in black, wear funny hats, have warty noses, or look like some kind of wicked ogre. They were regular looking women, which is the representation I am painting. The persecution of women continues to do this day. While it doesn’t manifest itself in hanging or burning, the effects are the same. Loss of bodily autonomy, medical gaslighting, rape, abuse, murder; the horrors for women continue. What is stopping someone from making you the next witch? 

The women may look like they are from a different era, or may look like someone you saw just yesterday. That is the point of this series. It could be any woman being persecuted in some way, just because they are a woman. They are small works often on paper, to represent the impermanence of their lives. ​

Sold - Isobel Of Loch Loy 11x14" Oil on panel

Isobel Of Loch Loy
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The ghost of Isobel is said to appear as a green lady walking the streets of Auldearn & Nairn, and the location of prisoned witches at Inshoch Castel. Isobel was married to a cottar (farm labourer). She helped her husband sell beef and cloth. She likely was a spinner as flax was grown on the farm.

After being kept in solitary confinement where she would undoubtedly been tortured, Isobel made several confessions that involved the use of charms and rhymes, and that she was a member of a coven to serve the devil. She said she’d made clay effigies of the Laird’s male children to cause them suffering. Within her 4 testimonies comes many of the present day associations with witches. She place a broom in her bed so her husband wouldn’t know she was gone. She would fly with the devil to houses to eat and drink. She talked of spirits dressed in black; of transforming into animals, usually a cat. She talked of chants and spells.

It is likely Isobel was suffering from ergot poisoning.