As an artist who leads an insanely busy personal and work life, it is honestly so weird to remember that the pieces I finish and show, versus the pics I see every day when I flip through my sketchbook, are entirely separate for people who look through my art. Like logically I know that only I can see my art I never post, of course. But it's weird and doesn't always make itself available as ready info for my brain, especially in this instance. Where I draw and color a doodle of my vengeance demon Deianara Paxos...

And then I realize I doodle her constantly in my sketchbook and computer but this is technically the second time she's appeared in my, like, actual gallery. That's wild.

Anyway. While I have yet to find the time to write out many bios, including Deianara's, here's some lore to give this pic a little more meaning. I mean, it's also just a cool picture. But there's a little more behind the idea of it.

Deianara is a major general in Hell. She started off as a vengeful spirit born out of the pain and injustices women and femmes have to experience and have had to experience for most of history. She rose through the ranks and made the very rarely traveled pathway to make herself a certified demon badass. So much so that she is considered among the highest ranks down in Hell, and one of Lucifer's favorites. There's so much lore and info about what this story's version of demons and Lucifer (called Destroyer) and things are (because they are obvious plays and anchored on classic evangelical ideas but take many twists and takes to make them distinct), but moving past that because I have to...

Every demon or underling of Lucifer will be visited by angels or other powerful spirits at least a few times over the course of eternity. These holy beings try their best to appeal to the nature of the demons and try to offer them the love and restorative grace of the all powerful Creator. Demons, in turn, visit angelic beings often, to do the opposite. Both sides often on recruit for those that they are paired with, to try and dissuade and convert, in a constant fight between the two realms. And obviously, both Creator and Destroyer try their best to pit holy and unholy pairs that they believe will be able to get through to their target. Doesn't matter if you're a lowly poltergeist or a five star general of Hell, everyone occasionally has to grapple with their holy counterpart showing up now and then, and proceeding to have a long discussion about their "career choices".

The only exception is Deianara. Deinara has only ever been approached once. And it was by the right hand holy spirit of the Creator himself, which broke the expectations everyone had. It was previously unheard of for the most powerful angel to visit a demon general, no matter how impressive her resume is. Deianara was surprised to find them, and when they spoke, Deinara had a lot of things to say. She quickly shot down the idea of doing anything else other than what she was doing. Punishing evil men and traitorous women, acting as a cosmic force against horrible injustices, unlawfully interfering with some mortal affairs to terrorize misogynistic perpetrators, and generally torturing men and women who spread hate and oppressions. And all this ultra powerful angel did was tell her, "Very well. It is your will." And left. No discussion about the cosmos, no dialogue about the roles of good and evil, not even a "think about it" goodbye.

This floored Deianara and was the subject of all the gossip in Hell for a long time. Deianara wanted to know why she was treated so differently. Why there was almost no real conversion effort, no attempt made to dissuade her from the evils she was doing and would inevitably do more of. She never gets her answer. At least not for eons. Deianara is clearly permitted, in some small part, to exist in peace with little to no interference from holy beings. The Destroyer remains utterly fascinated by this. And the only thing he has said about it is, "Deianara, it is very possible that He considers you to be a holy instrument he dares not speak of. Could it be that you are doing the Lord's work? A work that is covered in blood He can't stand to shed himself?" And poor Deianara had no answers. She has a very complicated relationship with "God" because of this. A relationship that, in it's own way, I thought had some good parallels well with the song "Dear God" by Dax. But that's a whole other thing I'll talk about as well.

I'll speak more about this when I write her bio but yeah. Enjoy whatever this little piece allows to make the picture a little more cool than it otherwise would be.