"Sauron Defeated"

"Sauron Defeated"

2023

Towers fell and mountains slid; walls crumbled and melted, crashing down; vast spires of smoke and spouting steams went billowing up, up, until they toppled like an overwhelming wave, and its wild crest curled and came foaming down upon the land. 

-"The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King", by J.R.R. Tolkien

The realm of Sauron is ended!

The climax of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy may well be my favorite scene in the whole saga. And that is in part, with apologies to Professor Tolkien and the purists, because it is so much better done in the film than in the book.

The novel gives the impression that the destruction of the Ring happened by mere accident, with Gollum tripping and falling into the fiery chasm; further writings by Tolkien explain that it was actually divine intervention that destroyed it, which, narratively speaking, isn't much better. In the film however, the Ring effectively destroys itself. At the very moment when it looks like the Ring has won, having finally overpowered Frodo and with Sauron within moments of retrieving it, its power turns on itself: it inadvertently makes Frodo and Gollum fight over it (mirroring the very first scene of the film with Sméagol and Déagol), and they both fall off the cliff. And it doesn't stop there. For a few moments the Ring floats in the lava, as if enticing Frodo, hanging over the edge, to follow it in its ruin. Only at the very moment where Frodo reaches out and grabs hold of Sam does the Ring, its final act of malice foiled, melt into the lava.

What follows is the stunning, beautiful, cathartic collapse of Barad-dûr, and the end of Sauron's power in Middle-earth. And here too it's good that the geography is changed somewhat in the films, because our heroes at the Black Gate get to watch the Dark Tower fall with their own eyes. There's nothing quite like the sight of the mighty Dark Lord watching powerlessly as all his works crumble beneath him, even as he himself is reduced to oblivion.

All in all, it's a brilliantly paced, magnificently executed scene, and has become for me an encouraging and comforting reminder that all tyrants, all empires, do indeed fall.

"Nature's Spear"

2024

Black Rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis)

In the mood to draw rhinos. It's curious how in the two African species the horns sometimes grow ridiculously long.

The pose and perspective made this fellow challenging to draw and to shade, but it came out quite alright.

"Motaz"

2024

My first artwork of the year is dedicated to the incredible Motaz Azaiza and to all the heroic Palestinian journalists of the Gaza Strip: to those who, like him, continue to report bravely, steadfastly, the horrific situation in their homeland; to those who have made the difficult but also brave decision to leave for safety; and to the all too many who have been unjustly killed in their line of work, murdered by the Israeli State in a cowardly attempt to cover up their crimes.

An unfair burden has been put in the shoulders of these journalists, a lot of whom are shockingly young and just fresh out of university. Not only do they have to struggle to survive during a veritable genocide of their people, but they have to do so whilst reporting on it, whilst serving as spokespersons of all the suffering and grief inflicted on themselves and their kin. Multinational media conglomerates with overwhelmingly more power and resources have consistently and actively refused to treat the Palestinian people with the transparency, truth, and dignity that they deserve. So it's been up to these brave men and women to do the job that others will not do, to arm themselves with their own cameras and their social media pages and their unparalleled courage to tell their own stories and their own realities, to use languages foreign to them so that the world might better understand and sympathize with their plight. I cannot overstate what an enormous, heroic effort that must be, and I am in complete awe and admiration of them; but I also feel sorry and ashamed that these folks, many with their whole lives in front of them, have so unjustly, so cruelly, been thrust into this position. Yet through it all they have never failed to carry themselves with the passion, the dignity, the strength, and the zest for life that I've come to learn so characterizes the Palestinian people, and for that one can't help but admire them even more.

"Proud"

2024

This Pride Month my heart and my thoughts are with Queer Palestinians, whose existence, too inconvenient for Zionist propaganda and western liberal imperialism, has often been minimized, hidden and denied. And yet they exist, and like queer people everywhere, they struggle, they overcome, they love, and they dream.

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The state of Israel has gone to great lengths to paint itself as a haven for gay rights in the Middle-east; a bastion of civilized, liberal values in a region filled with barbaric, murderous fanatics. And like most of its propaganda, this argument is based on a complete distortion of reality, if not flat out lies.

Homosexuality has been legal in the West Bank since 1951. Efforts to re-criminalize it or to ban LGBTQ advocacy groups have been successfully opposed by civil society. In Gaza homosexuality is illegal (from a law dating back to the British Mandate, I may add), but it is punishable by imprisonment, not death, and this is rarely enforced. By contrast, homosexuality is legal in Israel, but same-sex marriage is not. The rise of the far-right in recent years has coincided with a spike in homophobic hate crimes. Israel has also a notorious record of blackmailing queer Palestinians into becoming informants, threatening to out them to their relatives if they don't cooperate with the occupation.

All this to say: whatever taboos remain to be overcome by Palestinian society, neither them nor their governments make it a habit or a priority to go block by block, house by house, looking for queer people to round up and kill. And however gay-friendly Israel may seem in comparison to its Arab neighbors, it is far, far from what western liberals have come to expect from a "gay paradise", to say nothing of their treatment of Palestinians, queer or straight. In fact, if anyone seems to be the one going out of their way to target queer people, to use them for their own ends, to threaten them with punishment, it is Israel. They use their own LGBTQ community to pinkwash their crimes, and they weaponize the identities of queer Palestinians to turn them against their own people.

Indeed, queer Palestinians face far, far greater danger and oppression from Israel than from whatever Palestinian government nominally rules over them. I imagine things like Pride flags and Pride parades, same-sex marriage, coming out even, are not the first priorities on ones mind when one has the entire apparatus of a colonial nation-state suffocating them; when there are bombs raining down from the sky, and you don't know if you're going to live, or have a home, or a future. It's frankly absurd to be expected to see the absence of rainbow flags as a greater evil than the bombing of cities, the murdering of families, and the destruction of an entire society...or worse, to use it as justification for such crimes.

Because ultimately, it doesn't matter if the fantasy concocted by Zionist propaganda were true or not. It doesn't matter if Palestine really were a hub for murderous homophobic fanatics, and Israel a wonderful gay utopia: occupation is still wrong, apartheid is still wrong, genocide is still wrong. Period. The cheerleaders of this genocide even undertand this on some level. They use the lack of gay rights in Palestine as justification for the killing, but you never see them apply the same reasoning for homophobia in the West, of which many of its proponents are far more vitriolic and draconian than Palestinians actually are. Yet as always, white western people are given leniency for their crimes, no matter how monstrous, while Palestinians and other racialized societies are savagely punished for their flaws, real or imagined.

My hope for the people of Palestine, queer or otherwise, is for them to be free of the crushing weight of Zionist oppression, and to not let anyone else dictate the terms of their own freedom and their own dreams.

Happy Pride 🏳️‍🌈 and Free Palestine 🇵🇸

"Morgul Lord"

2024

This way and that turned the dark head helmed and crowned with fear, sweeping the shadows with its unseen eyes.

-"The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers", by J.R.R. Tolkien

The evil, greenish, foreboding light of Minas Morgul really suits the Witch-king beautifully.

Done for Day 2 of Allan Whincup's Tolkien Art Challenge on Instagram.

"Self-portrait"

2024

Figured I'm due for a self-portrait. Featuring a beautiful black and gold keffiyeh that I got at a pro-Palestine protest earlier this month.