Not the broomstick kind, but the creative, subversive, world-building kind, the ones who use imagination as a form of resistance.
This year, I’m sharing a few artworks by women who turned the witch into a figure of strength, mystery, and transformation. These artists remind us that “witchiness” isn’t about darkness, it’s about power, intuition, and the audacity to create something from nothing.
Varo’s Creación de las aves (1957) is one of my favorite examples of “quiet witchcraft.”
A bird-woman sits in a moonlit room, drawing life into being — a literal act of creation. Every artist knows that moment when creation feels like conjuring.
“Creation is a kind of witchcraft. My power, my body, my making. May no one name my magic except myself.”
Leonora Carrington: The Visionary Witch
Carrington’s surrealist works overflow with magical women — shapeshifters, healers, dreamers. In The House Opposite (1945), her figures move through strange rooms and rituals, unbound by logic or convention.
“They called us witches, but all we did was claim what was ours: voice, vision, freedom.”
Her refusal to be defined or possessed is witchcraft at its finest.
Kiki Smith: Lilith, the Original Rebel
Smith reimagines Lilith — the first woman who refused to obey — as a life-sized figure crouched on a wall, watching from above. It’s eerie, unsettling, and utterly magnetic.
“They said Lilith was too wild, too willful, too much. So she left—and became legend.”
Defiance isn’t destruction — it’s survival.
Paula Rego: Complexity and Grit
Rego’s witches aren’t fairytale villains — they’re complicated, cunning, and fully human. Her work invites us to see witchcraft not as evil, but as knowledge, agency, and grit.
“The witch is not wicked. She’s a woman who knows too much.”
Rego’s work reminds us that women deserve messy, powerful, unapologetic space — and taking it is an act of magic in itself.
Claude Cahun: Transformation as Magic
Cahun’s self-portrait still feels radical almost a century later. Playful and defiant, she challenges gender norms with unapologetic performance. There’s something witchy about transformation itself — the power to shapeshift, to refuse definition.
“Witchcraft begins where gender rules end.”
Sometimes magic is just being exactly who you are.
Kara Walker: Shadow and Story
Walker’s Cut stops you cold: a silhouetted woman leaps — or fights — midair, blade in hand. It’s violent and beautiful, dark and luminous. She transforms shadow into storytelling.
“Even in the shadows, she commands the story.”
A perfect reminder this witch season: we write our own myths now.
Here’s to the artists who carry their ancestors like armor and make the invisible visible again.
Closing Spell
Here’s to every woman who’s ever been called a witch and kept creating anyway. Empowerment is the oldest magic, and art is still our most potent spell. ✨
“Here’s to women who stir the pot, light the fire, and make art from the ashes.”
Happy Halloween — and may your night be full of creative mischief.
Quotes in this post are inspired by the lives and works of Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, Kiki Smith, Paula Rego, Claude Cahun, and Kara Walker. All phrasing not directly cited is my own interpretation.
Image below: illustration by me from What We Do in the Hollows (2024), with poetry by Renée K. Nicholson.
