Luca Day Witch III

I felt I needed a third Luca Witch to complete a small set of three for my solo exhibition (still untitled). 

I discarded my idea of the third witch being older, and decided to instead depict a very young girl - continuing my commentary of social outcasts and strangers being labeled as witches in small, paranoid communities. How young can a witch be? When does she become a witch? Or is the child of an outcast already born branded as such?

The Bandit Leader

The LAST of my “Hungarian Folktales” inspired illustrations, ready for my May solo exhibition.

I introduce the Bandit Leader, from a folktale called “The Prince of the Three Wild Beasts”. In the tale, as the old King lays dying, he makes his son promise that he will not marry until he finds a suitable husband for his younger sister. The princess however is not an overall sympathetic character, and no suitors arrive to ask for her hand. Fed up the prince announces he is going to go adventuring and see the world. Upon her requests, the prince takes his sister with him. On the road they are accosted by a troupe of bandits, but the prince slays them all with ease – he spares the leader, who leads them to his castle in the woods. Here the Bandit Leader is locked in a room as a prisoner – but not before the princess falls for his good looks. Through the keyhole he wins her heart with beguiling promises and flattery, and convinces her to try and kill her brother. However, with his kind heart the prince wins the unfailing loyalty of the three wild beasts sent to kill him, who at the end of the tale tear the Bandit Leader to shreds for attempting to murder their master. I wanted to depict my Bandit as a handsome, though dangerous faced young man.

After completing 30 folktale illustrations, (25 within the past four months - as well as various other side projects), I feel I have done this theme justice, and am ready to move on to a new body of work.

Luca Witch

In Hungary the 13th of December is celebrated as Luca Day, a day when evil walks amongst us, similar to the Western "All Hallows Eve".

On Luca Day the young men of the town would start to build the Luca Chair. Each day up until Christmas Eve you had to work on a particular part of this chair, which eventually had to be constructed and carved out of 13 different types of wood, over 13 days. On Christmas Eve the guys would smuggle the chair into midnight mass hidden beneath their coats. Superstition was that if you stood on the chair at midnight you would be able to see who amongst those present was a witch. The Witches on this evening would grow long horns, invisible to the naked eye. Because of the horns they would have to duck or bend over as they entered the gate of the church. The person who stood on the Luca chair would be able to see the horns and identify the witch – then they would have to run home (screaming and hollering I imagine) lest the witch, enraged that she/he’d been discovered tore them to shreds. By dismantling and burning the Luca Chair in the fire you symbolically burned the witch – the little pieces of wood were rumoured to shriek in the fire as the evil spirits were burned.

I loved the imagery of the witches sprouting horns, and am working on a small series of Luca Portraits inspired by this tradition. The horns here are based upon a traditional breed of giant grey cattle confined to Hungary known simply as "Grey Cattle " (Szürke Marha).

The Milk-Eyed Seer

Sometimes I don’t actually illustrate a particular character in a particular folktale, but either take inspiration from the essence of the tale, or wander down a completely different path. This was such a case.

When working out the composition for The Witch’s Daughter, I couldn’t decide between a portrait, or a full-body composition. I ended up choosing to depict the entire pose – I felt it was very important in order to convey the situation the girl found herself in – flung to the ground, awaiting her unfair fate.

The idea of a portrait however, nagged at my mind. I didn’t want this to be “The Witch’s Daughter #2”, but I struggled to find a suitable folk-tale to slot her into. The closest I came was a witch who traded specifically in eyes, and had a little shop set up in town. When a poor florist finds a blinded girl weeping by the road he takes her home, and goes to the witch to buy a pair of eyes for the girl. 

Imagery of blind girls, milky eyes and witches began to meld together in my imagination. Once I finished painting her I felt she needed something a little more –she wasn’t eerie enough. I thought of the most horrible thing I could – moths. Not scary enough yet. Dead moths. Perfect.

 

In the end I don’t think she turned out so horrible and eerie anyway – which I am glad about. I prefer to show the proud and human side of the “ghastly” characters in traditional folktales, the ones you are supposed to recoil from in revulsion simply because they are different from the “common folk”. I also wanted to show that the ugly old blind woman was once young, able to see what you and I cannot.

My Sweet Mother’s Rose Tree

Something hopelessly romantic from me again :-}

 

Almost every Hungarian folksong will open with a verse somehow relating to nature, and references to flowers or birds often allude to the girl being sung about. One of my favourite songs opens with the line: “My Sweet mother’s rose tree.” Further along in the same song the two lines that inspired this piece translate roughly as: 

“I would recommend for everyone, that dreams are better than love,

Because dreams bring you calm, whereas love is only heartache.”

Édesanyám Rózsafája

“Mindenkinek azt ajánlom, a szerelemnél jobb az álom,

Mert az álom nyugodalom, a szerelem csak szív fájdalom.”

I’ve happily become acquainted with a fantastic local band here in Győr called Arabona, who re-work a lot of traditional Hungarian folksongs when they perform, and this one really wrung my heart - like any good hapless romantic. When I am painting I always listen to music, and I find that often what I am listening to will begin to inspire the mood of the piece inadvertently. Quite often a line from a song will end up becoming the title because the two can no longer be separated for me. Whilst I was painting this one I was listening to Florence and the Machine, and another verse caught my attention that seemed equally fitting:

“No more calling like a crow, for a boy, for a body in the garden.

No more dreaming like a girl, so in love, so in love with the wrong one.”

I’m debating painting the shadow of a rose tree spreading out above her. But we will see. Hope you like her!

The King of Crows

The King of Crows, or The Crow King. 

According to the Hungarian folktale by the same name, a poor peasant farmer with barely enough to eat for himself and his wife is informed that the troops of the Crow King are headed his way, and that he is to feed them during their stop-over, and after their stay if he heads to the King’s Castle he will be rewarded greatly. The poor peasant laments that he has nothing but his two oxen that he needs to make a living, and watches in dismay as the crows swoop down from the sky and devour his oxen in a ferocious frenzy. The next day he heads out on foot and travels for days and nights, occasionally hearing word that he is on the right track, and to just keep on. When he gets to the castle he is met by the King of Crows, who thanks him for his generosity and offers him much wealth – gold and jewels, anything his heart desires. The poor man says he has no use for such wealth, he simply wants the little salt grinder by the King’s bed (it is a magic salt grinder, aha!) With this he is able to create anything he wants by saying some magic words and grinding the little wheel away. The tale then detours and continuous on a different train about what he is able to achieve with the magic salt grinder. 

 

The part of the story I really like is when the King demonstrates the prowess of his soldiers - at his call a black crow flies through the open window into the room, and in an instant lands on the floor and turns into a valiant and handsome soldier, then just as easily transforms back into a crow and disappears from the room. I was really taken with this imagery, and though there is nothing in the story to suggest the King also has such powers, I decided I wanted my King of Crows to be just like this – not entirely human.