The Last Spell of Fistandantilus
C
alendar Plate – Oils on illustration board – 18″ x 18 ”
There are always parts of our past that come back to haunt us — slices of images that dance on the edge of memory, occasionally stepping fully into the light, then fading back into half shadow. These phantoms are the stuff of dreams and the seeds of ideas. The rope in this painting is one of those. When I was very young I saw a Sinbad movie, I don’t remember which it was, but in it, there was a hollow tower and at the very top of it an evil sorcerer kept his heart. For Sinbad to defeat this adversary, he needed to ascend a titanic rope that hung in the center of this tower and stop the beating heart. I don’t know why, but the image of that rope stuck with me. I forgot most of the rest of the movie, but periodically, I would think about it. When it came time to illustrate another evil wizard, Fistandantilus, the rope came to mind again. I saw it as a link to an earlier version of the same archetype character, and knew the time to use it had arrived.
- Keith Parkinson (Kingsgate 2004)
