My latest work, The Crones of IGNIS, invites you to celebrate the power and fabulousness of the aging woman and remember those who have been persecuted for existing outside of dominant norms.

When I set out to embellish a female torso with the theme of fire, I could not overlook the connection of fire to women of the past burnt or otherwise extinguished, accused of being witches.

The Crones of IGNIS is, in part, a response to Hans Baldung Grien’s grim chiaroscuro woodcut, The Witches (1510), which was doubtlessly influenced by the demonizing treatise Malleus Maleficarum (The Witches' Hammer), written by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger in 1487. Although persecution of women as witches occurred long before The Witches Hammer, the book threw gasoline on the fire of the patriarchal religion fueled persecutions that swept across Europe and on to colonized America.

Max Dashu’s book Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religion, 700-1100 (2016), is an invaluable text that dispels long-held assumptions about the term “witch” and illuminates it’s origin as a signifier of wise women, prophets, diviners, healers, and dreamers. Max Dashu is an American feminist historian, author, and artist who has amassed a vast body of research covering women’s history, including the origins of patriarchy. (https://www.suppressedhistories.net/) .

The words Witch and Pagan still draw angst today, perceived by many as those who are in league with the devil—a devil invented by patriarchal religions to dominate and control people with earth-based cultural practices.

IGNIS is a work of reclamation, where I have embellished Grien’s sinister black-and-white image portraying haggard, naked crones engaged in nefarious practices. The Crones of IGNIS are covered in glitter, infused with vibrancy, and together radiate a joyful scene of ritual emblazoned on the culturally coded generic female torso, mass produced as an impossible patriarchal ideal for all women.

Whilst IGNIS seeks to illuminate the persecution of women as witches, it also reclaims the crone as a figure of knowledge, endurance, intuition, and fiery brilliance. The piece is a tribute to the transformation of the female body from child to maiden to mother to crone and the power of any woman beyond a reproductive function. Intense hot flashes commonly accompany a woman’s physiological transformation into her crone years. As estrogen decreases the bodies temperature is deregulated and fluctuates wildly from hot to cold. The flash is just one of the often debilitating effects of menopause. The passage to the crone is intense but allows freedom from the monthly reproductive cycle that controls the female body for decades.

The word IGNIS, emblazoned on the torso's chest, is the Latin term for fire, and is surrounded by flickering flames of purification. A central, glitter-covered woman with long, flowing silver hair rides a goat carrying a bubbling cauldron. The work reclaims the goat from the negative connotations of demonic sacrifice. The goat here is a totem animal a guardian of resilience, vitality, and strength as it carries the crone, holding a bubbling cauldron of divine feminine energy. Below, on either side, silver-haired women sit in circle and safeguard the flying figure’s transportation of ancestral knowledge.

At the center of the work, the alchemical symbol of fire blazes in the solar plexus chakra. This chakra is associated with empowerment and provides strength for action. The triangular element of fire is essential for spiritual transformation. Beneath the symbol of fire at the sacral chakra, a crone rises from the creative darkness of the womb. Surrounding the figures, swirling organic patterns in gold, red, orange, and white weave the narrative threads out of the mystic purple darkness.

I hope that IGNIS sparks reflection on how women’s strength, especially at the intersections of age and knowledge, has been systematically marginalized, and that it is time for the power of the crone to blaze and reshape cultural memory and influence an inclusive future. Let us celebrate resistance to the domination of the feminine in all its forms.