Oil on canvas, 30″x 36″

Below is a reflection on the painting written by the owner, Diana Davidson, whose debut novel, Pilgrimage, earned critical acclaim when it was published in September 2013 by Brindle & Glass:

“I will always be grateful to Angela for painting Lindisfarne Priory and the Holy Island for us. Her artistry and movement brings this memory of Northern England to life for me every time I look at her painting in my living room. My husband Stan and I were newly married and living in York, England when we went on a day trip to Lindisfarne Priory (http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/lindisfarne-priory/). Stan took this photo and, years later when we were back in Edmonton, we gave it to Angela to use as the basis of a painting.

As you can see from Angela’s work, the day we were there, the grass was lush green and some brave yellow daffodils were blooming. I also remember it being a crisp and breezy February afternoon. We tasted some honey-mead (a specialty of the area) and walked amongst ruins of the place where long-ago monks created the Lindisfarne gospels and Vikings came to raid their treasures. I imagined the monks and nuns who had once walked those stone halls looking out onto the water on an afternoon much like ours. I felt connected.

We’ve had a few guests in our house comment that it is “a bit weird” to have a painting of a graveyard in our living room. But Lindisfarne is a place of survival – there is beauty in the decay and the cavernness echoes of the past. Lindisfarne is a man-made relic that has come back to nature with clinging fervent mosses and seagulls’ nests and waste intermingling with the famous rainbow arch and other intricate stone carvings. Lindisfarne is at once a testament to a past that is lost and to the resiliency that there is always a future (even if it is unknowable for those of us in the present). This is a place where great art and devotion happened.

Angela’s hauntingly beautiful painting captures all of this and more.”