Joe Tucker’s uncle, Eric, left school at 14 and worked as a labourer for several decades before taking early retirement in his 50s due to chronic arthritis. In his spare time he painted Lowry-esque vignettes of working-class life. After his death in 2018 at the age of 84, his family found a stash of more than 500 paintings in his terrace house in Warrington. As Tucker recalls, it felt “like discovering a vast escape tunnel dug by a prisoner with just a spoon”. In addition to scenes from pubs, theatres and nightclubs, “there were portraits of pigeon fanciers, surreal montages of clowns and carnival workers, pictures of down-and-outs, cabaret turns, Travellers, broad-shouldered housewives in headscarves, and slightly haunting, hobbling children”.
Tucker, a screenwriter and fellow Warrington native, arranged an exhibition of the work in his uncle’s home in 2019. It drew thousands of visitors and garnered national media attention; a full retrospective at the Warrington Museum and Art Gallery followed, and the paintings have since been exhibited in two Mayfair galleries. In The Secret Painter, Tucker unpacks the eccentric life behind this remarkable story.
