Abandoned dollhouses make for some creepy yet fascinating paintings

The collection of paintings were apparently inspired by Sylvanian Families – the collectable anthropomorphic animal figurines made of flocked plastic. Mackie said: "A friend of mine gave me a pile of Sylvanian Families once. They sat in my studio, where they occasionally caught my eye. They started to take hold a little and I looked at them closer as time passed. Such smoothly contoured little furry faces. They would be great to paint. I put them to one side again, unsure what excuse or concept I could make in order to construct the painting.

"Then I headed down to another friend's photography studio to see if we could take some Caravaggio styled chiaroscuro photographs of the little bunnies. The idea being that I could populate the iconic movie horror sets with them. I started playing and sketching whilst continuing to paint the Source of Light series.

"The sketching never quite worked so I decided to remove the bunnies and the iconic horror sets - which was kind of like removing the entire idea. But what I had left was a skeleton for what would make an interesting mood. And thus the Abandoned Dollhouses began."