Artist Statement
This piece entitled “Consult the Bones” is the first in a series which explores the enigmatic and shape shifting archetype of the witch. Witches, shamans, oracles, and magical healers persist across cultures and throughout human history. They have been venerated, respected, feared, and reviled; unspeakably persecuted and turned to in desperation by those very figures who would otherwise see them burn at the stake. The witch has many faces, but she is consistently one thing – a woman of wisdom, mystery, and power. She is a wild, untameable spirit. She is, irreducibly, a strong woman.
Barefoot, naked, close to the earth, “Bones” peers up unflinchingly at the viewer, but her expression betrays her mistrust. She has secrets we desperately want to know, but she seems ready to flee. Wiley and ageless, she is a fleeting apparition, like a rare animal in the forest who refuses to be caught.
Our relationship to the witch, much like our dynamic with nature, is complex, conflicted, and deeply imbedded in our cultural and biological psyche; a mix of awe, fascination, vulnerability, and a stubborn, sometimes violent defiance of her persistence and power. The more we try to rationalize, reduce, and intellectualize her, the more the spirit of the thing seems to slip through our fingers.
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