Baroque and Broken: Eerie Paintings in Abandoned Places

[ By Steph in Art & Photography & Video. ]

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Shuffling through ancient paint chips, dead leaves and empty bottles in an abandoned and dilapidated building, you turn a corner and register a human figure emerging from the darkness in a haze of flesh tones and pale fabric. It might take a moment to realize that it’s not a real person, but rather a painting in the style of the old masters, rendered right there on the gritty wall like an heirloom left behind when the place was vacated.

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Working under an assumed name, Belfast artist Ted Pim has spent the last ten years traveling the world, creating these eerie works inside abandoned buildings. He spends days alone completing each work armed with no more than his paints, industrial torches and a camera.

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Aside from anyone who might have stumbled upon them unknowingly, no one has seen these works prior to Pim publishing the photos on his website and on Instagram in June 2015. The artist documented each painting and kept the images in a folder all these years. Private collectors in London and New York City recently purchased all of his completed works on canvas, and more are coming in winter 2015.

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“I was drawn to abandoned buildings as I liked the contrast of painting detailed, Baroque-inspired pieces inside dark, neglected structures,” Pim tells WebUrbanist. “These buildings provided me with the perfect atmosphere to create my pieces, with the end result often reflecting my surroundings- haunting, dark figures.”

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“The paintings usually take a few days, and I never return to the building. All my images were taken on an old analog camera and printed and scanned (the reason for fingerprints on some of the images.)”