Barlowe's Inferno

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In Inferno, Barlowe envisions an entire living landscape grown and tortured into a gnashing organ of torment. A collection of art and narrative that brings Barlowe's detailed world-building of Expedition to Hell.

Lee attended an art college for one year, but felt she would be better writing her ideas than painting them. I wanted to enjoy the act of creating these inquisitive demons and felt that being too slavish to a sketch might make them less lively. Nonetheless, demons like Sargatanas are capable of sprouting great fan-like wings that bear some resemblance to their former seraphic or cherubic wings for just such journeys. Here potent glyphs stream away from the wings’ trailing edges, glyphs that not only keep the demon aloft but also delineate territories and can carry commands to nearby airborne troops. And I also wanted to let the paint, itself, flow a little more freely to enhance the sense of dynamism this character has always had in my mind.

In 1971, Macmillan published "The Dragon Hoard," another children's book, which was followed by "Animal Castle" and "Princess Hynchatti and Other Stories" in 1972. For a variety of reasons I’d rather not elaborate upon here, I decided to separate this entity visually from all of the other demons in Hell and go with a somewhat more abstract form. The fact that Lucifer went to war in large part because of them has created a curiosity that many demons find irresistible. There have been so many “evil” buildings rendered in paintings and for film that I was consciously trying not repeat anything I’d seen before.

The devil is in the details and it took quite some time to work out all of the motifs from a design standpoint. Hunted for their skins and their usefulness as war-beasts, many Abyssals evoke an attitude of savage respect from the demons, while, for their part, the more intelligent of the Abyssals keep their distance, understanding the innate superiority of the new-comers.Tanith Lee, September 19, 1947 - May 24, 2015 Tanith Lee was born on September 19, 1947 in London, England, the daughter of ballroom dancers.