The Secret Painter

The Secret Painter by Joe Tucker explores the life of Joe Tucker's Uncle Eric, an unconventional figure beloved throughout Joe's life. Eric was 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. Yet, he had also amassed over five hundred 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 lives of those nearest to us, Joe Tucker brings us into his uncle's extraordinary and compelling world, and perhaps more importantly, brings Eric Tucker's life's work into ours.