Joe Tucker - The Secret Painter

Already a shop favourite and big hit at our Real Magic book group, we cannot recommend this book enough. Carl will be talking to Joe Tucker about his Uncle Eric, the Secret Painter.

‘A timely reminder that art did not originate as an investment opportunity or a get-rich-quick scheme but as a way for human beings to make sense of their lives (plus make them bearable into the bargain). Miracles happen in the most unlikely places’ Jarvis Cocker

Joe Tucker’s Uncle Eric was a beloved yet unconventional figure throughout Joe’s life. A shambolically dressed man who lived with his mother for almost eighty years, he had an almost compulsive need to charm strangers with working men’s club comedy routines, and appeared to exist only for daily trips to the bookie – and yet had also amassed over five hundred of his own remarkable paintings without anyone ever realising his achievements.

Towards the end of his life, Eric requested an exhibition of his work. As Joe and his family sorted through hundreds of paintings of street scenes, circus and theatre performers, and busy pubs, they began to ask more questions about Eric’s life: why had this fanatically sociable man never left his mother’s home? Had Eric ever experienced love when he painted it so beautifully? And what had driven him to create so much, yet share it so rarely?

In this touching, funny and thoughtful investigation of the nature of expression, the ownership of art and the secret life of those nearest to us, Joe Tucker brings us into his uncle’s extraordinary and compelling world. Perhaps more importantly, he also brings Eric Tucker’s life’s work into ours.