Monthly Archives: January 2024
Behemoth, Satan’s Cat (Бегемот, кот Сатаны)
Here are character studies and an illustration for Behemoth, Satan’s cat, “… a cat the size of a pig, black as soot and with luxuriant cavalry officer’s whiskers … trotting along on its hind legs”, in the 1920s satire on Soviet Russia, The Master and Margarita. (Bulgakov, Mikhail. The Master and Margarita (Vintage Classic Russians Series. Random House. Kindle Edition).
“… most extraordinary thing of all: not that a cat had boarded a tram car but the fact that the animal was offering to pay its fare!”
Then the most incredible thing happened. The cat’s fur stood on end and it uttered a harrowing ‘miaaow!’ It crouched, then leaped like a panther straight for Bengalsky’s chest and from there to his head.
More “drawing is free” faces
You need only ask yourself …
“You need only ask yourself…where was I when genocidal acts were being committed in Gaza against the Palestinian people?”
When, in the Al Awda Hospital, the surgical case list whiteboard became useless because of the overwhelming number of people arriving severely injured by munitions and needing treatment, instead, these words were written:
“Whoever stays
Until the end
Will tell the story
We did what we could
*remember us*
The case was presented by South Africa at the International Court of Justice for an end to “The first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real time”
“Some might say that the very reputation of international law, its ability and willingness to bind and to protect all people equally, hangs in the balance.”, (Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh KC).
Drawing is free
So I joined a free drawing zoom on Monday – artists drawing each other for poses the length of a single music track. https://drawingisfree.org/.
protest banner designs
The systematic destruction of the health care system in Gaza is a crime against humanity, a piece of the ongoing act of genocide as territories under occupation are made uninhabitable for the Palestinian people. I stand with other health care workers to protest against the UK government’s complicity.
Here are the designs for my banner for the health care workers’ march on Downing Street just before Christmas. Somehow making banners in the face of such horror feels childish. But what can we do? We have so little power or influence. I have asked myself before, what would I do if my country was complicit in genocide? Would I even recognize it as it unfolded? Though powerless, would I stand against the horror, or, instead, close my eyes and ears and heart, and comfort myself in the denial myths?
In Gaza we are witnessing the deprivation of means of sustenance, destruction of most housing and infrastructure needed for survival, displacement of most of the population from conflict zone to conflict zone, and the systematic and indiscriminate use of munitions against civilians. Today, the International Court of Justice began hearings in a case brought by South Africa seeking a provisional measure that would oblige the occupying power “not to engage in genocide, and to prevent and to punish genocide”. The UK government meanwhile is carefully sidestepping the issue, seemingly avoiding legal opinions on any aspect of this (see the sequence from parliamentary committee from minute 20). My protest is against the UK government. I want it to wake up, do its duty and use its considerable influence to stop this genocide before it is too late.
Face sketches from Doctor Who
Behemoth, Satan’s Cat (Бегемот, кот Сатаны)
The visitor was no longer alone in the bedroom. The second armchair was now occupied by the creature who had materialised in the hall. He was now to be seen quite plainly – feathery moustache, one lens of his pince-nez glittering, the other missing. But worst of all was the third invader: a black cat of revolting proportions sprawled in a nonchalant attitude on the pouffe, a glass of vodka in one paw and a fork, on which he had just speared a pickled mushroom, in the other.
Mikhail Bulgakov,. The Master and Margarita (Мастера и Маргариты) Vintage Classic Russians Series) (p. 77). Random House. Written 1928-1940, first published in full 1973.
kestrelart 