Hell is Empty
This series of drawings began when I became a father and started reconnecting with books from my family library, and with the storytelling traditions of my childhood. Seeking out stories to share with my son, I was inspired by the wild exuberance of the illustrations, to start drawing my own.
The title of the series is drawn from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest: ‘hell is empty and all the devils are here’. The works imagine the devil as evoked in Islamic theology, a creature of fire, mischief and destruction.
Deliberately small and jewel-like, and combining collage and screen-printing, they are reminiscent of pages from illuminated manuscripts.
