Killer Bitches is a series of oil paintings that I started in December 2009. It is reported that 1 out of 6 serial killers is female. As a society we overlook the woman as a killer. We assume that when women kill that it comes from an emotional place or perhaps the woman was battered and it was self defense. Frequently postpartum depression or hormonal imbalances are considered the cause of why women kill. What we as a society often forget or dismiss is that women can and do kill for the same reasons men do. We forget that women are equally capable of anything a man can do.
The Countess Elizabeth Bathory.
Oil on wood
approx. 3 ft. x 2 ft.
Countess Elizabeth Bathory (1560-1614) is one of the most prolific female serial killers of all time.
After her husband's death, she and four collaborators were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls and young women, with one witness attributing to them over 600 victims, though the number for which they were convicted was 80.[1] Elizabeth herself was neither tried nor convicted. In 1610, however, she was imprisoned in the Csejte Castle, where she remained bricked in a set of rooms until her death four years later.
Later writings about the case have led to legendary accounts of the Countess bathing in the blood of virgins in order to retain her youth and subsequently also to comparisons with Vlad III the Impaler of Wallachia, on whom the fictional Count Dracula is partly based, and to modern nicknames of the Blood Countess and Countess Dracula.
