Lovecraftian drawings

These drawings are a small homage to the work of H P Lovecraft (1890-1937), whose weird horror stories have fascinated me since I was a teenager. I say ‘small’ because there is a long tradition of illustration inspired by Lovecraft’s themes—from the 1920s to the present—that I make no grand claim to have appropriated.


The fascination of Lovecraft is his pessimistic quest for the unfathomable and the unseen. His writings convey the overwhelming sense that human life—indeed human consciousness—is merely a cruel accident of evolution, and that the world around us not only has no overarching purpose or meaning but would easily destroy us. The ancient ones: the giant, rotting, squidlike forms that dreamed our cosmos into existence, are so incomprehensible in their monstrosity that to merely contemplate them would drive a normal person to madness. Though the world appears stable and predictable, it is a mere clod at the threshold of a much darker, murkier realm that hovers mercifully beyond the reach of our perception and understanding. It is this sense of standing at the precipice (and not yet crossing – for how could you?) which charges Lovecraft’s stories with a special, eerie quality. So with all of this at the front of my mind, I drew these monsters, which are an exercise in sheer self-indulgence. 

The 'Night Journey'

This is my interpretation of the miraj, which refers to the ‘night journey’ in which the Prophet Muhammad was transported from Mecca to Jerusalem and then upwards, towards heaven. It is a copper plate etching that features plenty of aquatint, to give it the starry sky effect.

According to legend, the Prophet was transported on the back of a winged horse-like creature with the head of a woman, called al-Buraq. The creature bears comparison with the winged monsters of ancient Babylonian and Persian mythology, which often served as guardian figures. Indeed, Muslim historians made this connection. When Ibn Balkhi visited Persepolis in the 12th century, he associated the bearded bull monsters at the gateway of Xerxes palace with al-Buraq. For this depiction, I have followed the convention, observed by most medieval Persian and Ottoman miniature painters, of veiling the Prophet’s head, which is encircled by a fiery nimbus.

The image that I worked from was this wonderful 17th century Safavid painting, in which the Prophet is seen raised above a flurry of clouds into the angelic realm, with Gabriel as his guide, against a starry moonlit sky, and surrounded by a sacred flame. The ornately curved cloud shapes and delicate flames licking around the Prophet’s form shows the stylistic influence of Eastern-Chinese painting on Persian art. However, the tradition of Persian miniature painting developed into something very unique. It is a flat, largely abstract way of panting which balances luminous colour, shape and decoration, to create a type of dream world. As Oleg Grabar, a scholar of Islamic art points out, human figures do not enjoy the centrality that is given to them in Western art but appear as one amongst many pictorial elements within an overall design. I was also thinking of Tiepolo’s ceiling frescos, and his amazing underside views of flying horses.  

Included as well is a more stylized interpretation of this theme, which I made for an unfinished comic book. 

More zombies...

Here are some images of a zombie work in progress, which also mark the stages in my attempts to learn photoshop. I still have a long way to go but at least I'm now getting to the stage of being comfortable with the program’s basics and can experiment with things as I go along. I also include a zombie wallpaper-type layout that I’ve been tinkering with.

Portraits from Villawood

Here are some portraits that I drew on trips to the Villawood detention centre with the Refugee Art Project. The group was founded in late 2010 to provide art classes for asylum seekers in detention and to display their work in public exhibitions. The idea is to allow detainees to express themselves through the medium of art, and to convey something of their experiences to the Australian community. Amongst our participants are a large number of people from Iran, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, who are some the largest groups in our detention centres. Their works vary across diverse genres of art, including drawing, painting, sculpture, and artworks made from found objects, including food!

The Marvels of Things Created and the Miraculous Aspects of Existing Things

Here is another work from 2011, titled 'The Marvels of Things Created and the Miraculous Aspects of Existing Things'. It is inspired by a 13th century manuscript of the same name which was written by a Muslim cosmographer, and which contains descriptions of the celestial spheres, geological forms, types of animals and uncanny creatures, including weird humanoids and animal-human mixtures. Pictorially, I wanted to mix the conventions of Persian and Indian miniature painting, with its often strange and fantastical, luminescent, coral-like landscapes and composite creatures, with my interest in comic book illustration (though it certainly leans more towards the latter). It was exhibited as a light box.

Stop Creeping Sharia!

I exhibited this zombie poster in Sydney's At the Vanishing Point gallery in the 'Contested Territories' exhibition last year. I had also forgotten that I even had this blog so it's time to update it and catch up on missed time! Here is the image and below is my artist's statement.

Artist’s Statement: “Stop Creeping Sharia!”

As channel Seven’s Today Tonight program recently reported: ‘Sharia law is being practiced across Australia. In every capital city sheikhs are dispensing Islamic justice!’ In conversation with the owner of a Muslim bookshop in Lakemba, Today Tonight’s reporter intoned that: ‘Australia already is an Islamic state!’ What the reporter failed to mention was that most Muslims understand sharia law according to the common obligations of prayer, fasting, and good moral sense. Instead, audiences were left wondering when these potential fifth columnists will overthrow ‘Australian laws’ and impose such oppressive punishments as stoning and amputation.

Thanks in part to the ‘war against terror’, Muslims are bombarded with distorted accusations and conspiracy theories that put a question mark under their civic morality. This is promoted by the political right, sections of the corporate media, and concerned citizen’s associations (such as ‘Q Society of Australia’ who describe Islam not as a religion but as a ‘totalitarian ideology’, comparable to fascism or Nazism). Such groups warn that Islamic values are a threat to Australia’s secular democracy. They refer to “creeping sharia” or “sharia by stealth”, as the Fairfax journalist Miranda Devine put it.

The Zombie genre in film and comics has often dramatised and provided social commentary on a range of political and cultural anxieties. In particular, the figure of the undead (as neither alive nor dead, yet driven forward by a primordial desire for human flesh) raises interesting questions about the conceptual limits and nature of the ‘civilisation’ under threat. Muslim zombies are my response to the ludicrous myths and conspiracy theories that frequently enter into discussions about Western Muslims and secular democracy.'

This is an ongoing project that I will update regularly, and a written zombie manifesto is in the works!

RIP Wilberforce

Recently, my dog Wilber was put down because he attempted to attack a child. It was a hard decision to make but the danger was such that there seemed to be no other choice. Perhaps he'd been abused by kids as a pup, or maybe he'd been trained to hunt pigs for a time (as Irish wolfhounds often are) and therefore associated small children with pigs. Whatever the case, he didn't seem to trust children and couldn't be trusted around them. He was sweet, cuddly, loyal and affectionate. But the attack was too sudden and unexpected. I'll miss him. RIP Wilby. You're a good boy. If there's a doggy heaven then you're certainly up there, chewing kangaroo tails and chasing birds.