The Devil Tarot
The Hanged Man was created as a general illustration for a blog post—at the other place—about politicians (hence the Houses of Parliament in the background) but it reminded me of Dave McKean's Particle Tarot, and so I decided to try my own version of the Major Arcana.
The first difficulty was attempting to find a definitive idea of what the Major Arcana are, since Tarot sets seem to differ. In the end I settled for one with plenty of definition about what the various cards could mean in their assorted contexts—this gave me some ideas to start with.
I started to work through the set, binding them together through shared textures—the dirt and the metallic squares run through all of the pieces. And there seem to be a disturbing number of babies in there too.
My personal favourites are The Tower and Justice—the former just came together nicely and I love the feeling that the sky is a solid river of gold passing not far overhead.
I like Justice because it makes a political point—the artwork was done at the end of 2007, when the UK government was forcing through, and abusing, some very illiberal legislation. In particular, they were busy attempting to abolish jury trials and the concept of innocent until proven guilty. Thus, I found it amusing to depict Justice as a whore, for sale to the highest bidder. So debased has Justice become however, that she is more than happy to take no payment at all: hence the "free trial".
Some of the pieces—such as The Lovers and Temperance—have gone through a couple of incarnations. There are a few of the others that I want to return to—The Devil is very weak for such a good subject, and Strength has never been inspired. This set is also missing Judgement and The World, which I shall complete at some point in the near future.
I enjoy doing these pieces: it is always good to have an idea to start an artwork from, and the themes around Tarot are well-defined and yet simultaneously ambiguous. I could easily see myself doing another set or two in different styles.
MORE ARTWORK COMING SOON...