This unconventional biography of Eric Tucker, Joe Tucker’s uncle, is a praise to an until recently unknown artist. Unconventional because his uncle was unconventional. A working-class man who lived all his life in Warrington, somewhere between Manchester and Liverpool, with his mother, who was able to create a life as an artist, hiding from everyone, even his family, his incredible skills and his artwork. More than 500 paintings were discovered after his death. Joe Tucker brings his uncle to life with emotion and humour, revealing Eric Tucker in all his complexity, as both an outsider and a keen observer of the world around him. This biography is not just a tribute but a celebration of his uncle. Very touching.
“Here, I think, is the key to understanding my uncle’s unorthodox philosophy. Why he was so ardently committed to a lack of airs and graces, to use his own phrase. Formality, decorum, status: these were fictions that got in the way of camaraderie, humanity and the real stuff of life. Even tact and discretion should be treated with suspicion; unnecessary for those with pure intentions, useful to those without. He used humour to disarm people, to defuse their pretences and get more immediately to what lay underneath. From his lack of sophistication, he gained something that he considered more valuable. In life but also, I think, in his art: what fosters greater connection also facilitates greater insight. Polish and refinement might be the stock-in-trade of the art gallery but, for him, they were poison to the artist.”