Abney Park

I live close to Abney Park, a rambling Victorian cemetery in Stoke Newington. When I first came to Hackney in the late 70’s I stayed in a house in Manor Rd that backed onto the cemetery and while I was living there I painted the view from my bedroom window, that picture is called ’The Dead Tree' and it appears in the gallery below dated 1980. In this picture you can see the steps that we used to enter the cemetery. It has to be said that Abney Park is a very eerie place at night, when I lived in Manor Rd I would sometimes take a short cut through the cemetery on my way home from the pub. It is said that two's company but if I should venture in by myself after dark it was difficult not to be spooked by the night time noises, most probably small animals about their nocturnal business, but these rustlings and the sounds of twigs breaking made me think I was being followed. And of course once one is in the heart of the cemetery it is a long way back to the road. In those days the chapel was a ruin and the crypt under the cenotaph was open, if one was curious enough to venture in there were coffins and some of these had been disturbed. It is rumoured that Voodoo and other occult practises have taken place under cover of darkness, especially at certain times of the year.

I have always been sympathetic to the Gothic imagination in both art and literature. I love ruins and overgrown cemeteries, twisted trees and cobwebbed staircases ankle deep in moss, places that have an atmosphere of abandonment and peaceful decay. For this reason I have painted a number of pictures inspired by Abney Park Cemetery. All of the paintings in this blog have been professionally photographed and are available as Fine Art quality canvas prints, life size or larger if required.

This is my most recent Abney Park inspired picture. At first sight one notices the sleeping lion and then the various statues begin to appear in the half light. I worked on this painting off and on over a period of several years. In a future blog I'll be discussing the composition with some images of the work in progress.