In August, I was lucky enough to visit the incredible Highgate Cemetery during the London Letterheads Conference. I was so inspired by my walk around the the gorgeous graveyard, I decided to dedicate my next gallery show to it. It is truly a dream world for any Victorian Goth lover.

To me, Highgate is kind of a living city to the dead. Although, it is still a working cemetery, I loved exploring the darkest of the lost paths. Highgate was built in the 19th century as one of the London Cemeteries that were on the outskirts of town. It housed the bodies of people could no longer be buried within the churches of London. As time wore on, it now has wild vines wrapping around the graves, showcasing some, while burying others, it is filled with birds and animals as well as a spooky legend or two. I loved it.

There is something that is so wonderful about visiting old graveyards that seems to be missing these days. Victorians were surrounded by so much death everyday, that they sort of embraced death, now we seem to be are more afraid of it.

Here are some of my illustrations (and a few photos I took) inspired by my trip to this legendary cemetery in London.

I thought these portraits would be a perfect countdown to Halloween.

I hope you like them!

My October gallery wall at City Art Gallery in San Francisco

Graves rearranged by time at Highgate Cemetery.

Georgina in the Sun (City Art Gallery October).jpg

Debra Styer, Georgina in the Sun, 2018

Debra Styer, A Sacred Magpie, 2018

In a Disused Graveyard

“The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill;
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never anymore the dead.
The verses in it say and say:
”The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay.”
So sure of death the marbles rhyme,
Yet can’t help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come.
A Disused Graveyard

What is it men are shrinking from?
It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die
And have stopped dying now forever.
I think they would believe the lie.

Robert Frost”