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 lived in a house 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’s the first image to appear in the gallery below.

I have always been sympathetic to the Gothic imagination in both art and literature. I like ruins and overgrown cemeteries, twisted trees and cobwebbed staircases, places with an atmosphere of abandonment and peaceful decay. For this reason I have painted a number of pictures inspired by Abney Park Cemetery.

This is my most recent Abney Park inspired picture. In the near future I'm hoping to post a better version as the painting is quite dark it's very difficult to photograph. At first sight one notices the sleeping lion first 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.