SHADOWHUNTERS AND DOWNWORLDERS

The Artist’s Way


Art is a kind of magic. Creativity is mysterious, even to artists, who might be able to name their inspiration but can’t always explain how their influences and experiences came together to create this new thing—this painting, this story, this song. If you break art down to its base elements, there’s nothing miraculous about the letters of the alphabet or a drop of paint. But an artist can put those elements together to create something powerful, something that moves us and withstands the test of time. A work that no one but that artist could have imagined, let alone created.

Clary has that magic in her. She grew up seeing strange things like pixies yet never remembering them, thanks to the block Magnus Bane put on her mind. Even before Clary realized she had the Sight and that there is more to the world than meets the average eye, she was searching for something beyond the reality she recognized and remembered—and she found that something more in art. As Simon says to Clary in City of Bones, “All you’ve ever needed is your pencils and your imaginary worlds.”

It’s hard to imagine Clary without Simon—he’s her best friend, and she would go to the ends of the earth to save him. So if Simon feels that Clary would be fine on her own, with just her art and her imagination to keep her company, that’s a testament to how essential art is to Clary’s life.

Art is magic, and art is powerful. Art saves lives—I really believe that. It gives us courage and compassion we might not have on our own.

When Clary’s mother, Jocelyn, is kidnapped by Valentine, Clary is in desperate need of some extra courage and strength. And in that crisis, she turns to art—the thing that most connects her and her artist mother—to guide her. Art is Clary’s foundation; it steadies her while the rest of her world is changing. So much so that when she’s living at the Institute and feeling overwhelmed, she hugs her sketchbook for comfort, because it’s such a familiar part of her life.

Art also helps Clary to cope with the strange and magical things she encounters. When she becomes conscious of glamours, she thinks like an artist in order to see through them: “Clary let her mind relax. She imagined herself taking one of her mother’s turpentine rags and dabbing at the view in front of her, cleaning away the glamour as if it were old paint” (City of Bones).

Clary even makes important discoveries while she’s doodling. One night she sketches some runes next to a drawing of an angel-winged Jace, then feels feathers when she brushes her fingers across the paper. Seeing that she can use runes to make a drawing come to life, Clary wonders if she can use runes and art to put an object into a page of her sketchbook. She tests her theory by drawing a coffee mug, then placing the mug on top of her drawing and sketching some runes on the page. Once she sees that it works, she realizes that must be how her mother hid the Mortal Cup from Valentine: by putting it into a painting. And that means Clary knows how to get it out.

Art is a part of Clary, just like her Shadowhunter lineage—but unlike her Shadowhunter side, art is something she understands. She uses it to makes sense of the world, to clear her mind and solve problems. And just as she can relax her mind and imagine turpentine clearing away a glamour, she can open her mind to inspiration when she or her friends are in trouble. She’s used to images appearing in her head—and she’s used to taking those visions and letting them flow from her pencil to the page.

So when she starts envisioning new runes, she picks up a stele and does what comes naturally.

“Where do you get your ideas?” is a question every artist is asked, and there is never just one answer. Ideas come in dreams or visions; they can come from conscious thought or seem to take shape on their own. The concept of the muse exists because there is no one way of explaining how and why artists are inspired to create—and why, other times, their creativity seems to desert them. When in City of Glass Simon asks Clary where her runes come from, she says:

“I don’t know…All the runes the Shadowhunters know come from the Gray Book. That’s why they can only be put on Nephilim; that’s what they’re for. But there are other, older runes…So when I think of these runes, like the Fearless rune, I don’t know if it’s something I’m inventing, or something I’m remembering…”

Sometimes new runes come to Clary fully formed, in a sudden burst of inspiration. The first hint we get of her rune-creating ability happens like this. When she and Jace are trapped on the roof of the Dumont (aka Dumort) Hotel, seconds away from being caught by the werewolves and vampires that are chasing them, they need to find a way off the roof, and Clary envisions a rune shaped like wings. Jace commandeers one of the vampires’ flying motorcycles before Clary has a chance to test that rune, but we—the readers—are pretty sure it was a Flight rune, and it’s a tantalizing promise of things to come.

Some new runes take shape only as Clary draws them, as if instinct and need are guiding her hand—like when Jace is imprisoned in the Silent City, and Clary’s so frantic to get him out that the simple Open rune she thinks she’s writing knocks the door right off its hinges and unlocks every pair of manacles in the vicinity.

Other runes require Clary to focus on the essence of the rune she wants to create, as when she’s desperate to follow Jace, Simon, and the Lightwoods to Idris, but the portal has closed and Magnus refuses to open another one. Clary grabs her stele, closes her eyes, and imagines “lines that spoke to her of doorways, of being carried on whirling air, of travel and faraway places” (City of Glass) until the Portal rune comes together in her mind, and she is able to draw it and open a portal to Idris herself.

Still other runes come to Clary in visions from the angel Ithuriel, such as the Alliance rune she uses to join Shadowhunters and Downworlders together in combat. I like to think the angel acts as her muse in those instances. Clary and Ithuriel are connected by blood, and that connection is part of what makes her runes so powerful, but it is Clary’s artistic sensibility that allows her to take what she sees in those visions and make it real.

As impressive as Clary’s new and amplified runes are, her power goes beyond the individual runes she creates. It’s her ability as an artist to see possibility where others see a blank page and, by extension, to see victory where others see certain defeat that truly empowers her and allows her to challenge Valentine when the Clave is on the verge of giving up.