White Haired Wolf Woman

In the early 1980s the character of the White-Haired Wolf Woman appeared in many games and fantasy books. She was sometimes a werewolf but more often kind of a hybrid wolf/human who could run with both wolves and humans. She had lupine characteristics, such as claws on her fingers or wolf-like eyes or sometimes pointed ears. This portrait of the stock character was made for a pair of friends who played this character, named "Lena," in a game. She may also have been a text and comics character. She had a brother who was a true werewolf, and the wolf here is her brother in animal form. A somewhat later version of the archetype, not necessarily white-haired, appeared in Clarissa Pinkola Estes' "Women Who Run with the Wolves," a romantic Jungian inspirational book for women.

"Lena and Brother Wolf" is gouache on illustration board, 7" x 8", February 1983.