My series of Lamia paintings was inspired by my time in El Pais Vasco in northern Spain. Lamia have haunted folk tales for millennia as far back as the Greeks. They have been associated with child eating queens, women with serpent’s tails and beautiful maidens similar to vampires or sirens who would seduce young wanderers in order to feast on their blood. In El Pais Vasco they are spoken of as half women, half bird and said to inhabit the mountains, hiding their bird’s legs and feet cleverly beneath their clothing. Birds scare me (I don’t like their quivering and flapping) but they also fascinate me. I love the idea of woman as birds, with birds and what metaphors can be harvested from our connection to them. My Lamia inhabit the city of Donostia and the stunning fisherman’s church of Getaria, they fly, perch and wait. I wanted them to be as mysterious as the feelings I was trying to capture in my paintings.
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CHARLIE BUCHANAN 