"Rima Staines, a talented British artist, has experimented with portraying different images of Baba Yaga, Red Riding Hood's grandmother, and the witch in "Hansel and Gretel." To her mind, they are all related and part of one deity. The old woman 'appears as an incarnation of the crone of winter aspect of the female deities of old. She is the carrier of wisdom, the guardian of the life and death gates, the overseer of the cold months, and the stewardess of the story...her appearance in orally passed down fairy tales seems to stress the importance of story for gaining and nurturing wisdom.'"
-Jack Zipes, The Irresistible Fairy Tale
I ADORE Rima Staines work! She's a lovely person too. Did you see what she and her husband are currently doing? They're taking a traveling storytelling 'caravan' around the country (UK) to instill wonder where ever they go: https://www.facebook.com/Hedgespoken (From Rima Staines & Tom Hiron: "Hedgespoken travelling off-grid theatre truck & home - a vehicle for the imagination. We're turning a 1960's Bedford truck into a device for wonder...") There's a little write-up in teh Spring Issue of Faerie Magazine (still avail. as a free download - and thank you for pointing to that a few posts ago!)
ReplyDeleteNo, I had no idea! There was just a little blurb about her work in the Zipes book quoted above and I was curious as to what the illustrations actually looked like.
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