Painting the ‘Grand Old Lady’

May 18th 2025 saw the final game of Everton men’s first team play at Goodison Part, affectionately known by fans as the ‘Grand Old Lady’. Whilst I don’t support Everton myself (Tranmere Rovers, across the river), I recognise the importance of grounds to their fan-base. The home of memories of being taken to the match with family, going with friends, the noise, smells, choice language (!), grabbing food and a beer or two in the build up. I have many friends and colleagues who are Everton fans, and as a passionate fan myself,I understand how much the temples of dreams, hopes, and often despair matter.

To mark this momentous event before the first team move to the new stadium at the Bramley-Moore dock, I wanted to capture the feel of going to the match at Goodison Park (or the ‘Toffeeopolis’). Everton are known as ‘The People’s Club’, and this traditional ground is one of a declining number rooted in the heart of the fan community.

Closely surrounded by terraced housing on three sides, I wanted to capture the community connection in the composition. I also wanted to capure key features such as the church of St Luke the Evangelist, the Holy Trinity statue (Howard Kendall, Alan Ball & Colin Harvey) and even a distant Winslow Hotel pub. I chose a high elevation composition partly to capture these features, and the feel of a club nestled in it’s community, and also inspired by LS Lowry who often painted from a higher viewpoint for his urban landscapes.

I did a lot of research to capture the feel of a match-day build up, and one particular day (vs West Ham, 2025) it was particularly sunny creating glorious colours to light the scene.

The painting is in oil on a 30” x 24” cotton canvas, using linseed oil as a medium, so pretty traditional. It was quite challenging to paint, requiring a few layers and adjustments to perspective lines as not painted from any source photograph. It has a lot of finer details as wanted to capture the tightness of the environment of the club bristling up against the narrow terraced streets, and with roads filling with crowds in the build up. As I work full time, this is mainly painted over weekends, started in mid March 2025 and taking about 6 weeks.

It’s available to buy as framed and unframed prints for any Toffee’s (or anyone else!) to remember their times here.

Starting the base layer blocking in the colours with oil paint thinned with a mix of turpentine substitute and linseed oil.

Making the most of painting in the sun. And hoping not too many flies get stuck in the wet paint.

Starting work on the foreground.