Debbie Lee is an internationally trained and collected artist. Having studied in London, Glasgow, Chicago and India she now keeps her studio on the coast of Dorset.

I am rediscovering Dante’s Hell through scroll making. I have been researching how to translate Dante’s Inferno into a fold out artists book with a view to developing images into colour lithography. Supported by a bursary from a_n The Artists Information Company and Arts Council England. This is massive encouragement for me to continue to develop my work thanks to @anartistsinfo and @aceagrams for awarding me the time, space and money bursary.

Debbie Lee

Nest of Harpies. Reminds me of the noise the birds make when I go for a run past Lesson woods.
Here they peck on the prickly branches of the people who committed suicide who turned into trees.

The souls of the Suicides are encased in thorny trees whose leaves are eaten by the odious HARPIES [sic], the overseers of the damned. When the Harpies feed upon them, damaging their leaves and limbs, the wound bleeds. Only as long as the blood flows are the souls of the trees able to speak.

Thus, they who destroyed their own bodies are denied a human form; and just as the supreme expression of their lives was self-destruction, so they are permitted to speak only through that which tears and destroys them. Only through their own blood do they find voice. And to add one more dimension to the symbolism, it is the Harpies – defilers of all they touch – who give them their eternally recurring wounds.

John Ciardi, The Inferno