Self Portraits of Unconditional Love in David Tucker: Dad

David Tucker: Dad at Gallery 46, 3 – 22 February 2024.
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Most people are likely to be touched by Alzheimer’s at some point in their lives, either directly or indirectly, and when I first saw David Tucker’s powerful and immersive paintings and sculptures, I was surprised to find that very few artists have explored the condition through the medium of art. I imagine this is because of the complexity of emotions it arouses, which makes Tucker’s decision to base a body of work around his late father’s descent into it, beginning aged just sixty-one, is such a brave undertaking. Having lived with and cared for his father until he went into a care home, the artist witnessed his father’s decline at closer quarters, and it is not surprising that this in turn confronted him with many questions about not just being a son, but also a parent, which the work in his forthcoming exhibition Dad, which is being staged at Gallery46 in Whitechapel, bears witness to. To translate the enormity of this subject, Tucker has been fearless, creating paintings and sculptures, all of which are primarily constituted from oil paint, which are not only original, but profoundly moving.

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How did the series come about? How have your experiences with Alzheimer’s affected your practice?
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The series came about as a natural response to try and immortalise my dad during his long illness with dementia.  What started simply as a documentation of dad, soon evolved into a complex series of work, brought on by a slow grieving process.
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I didn’t realise the change was creeping up on me and when lockdown came and visits to dad had stopped, I spent a lot of time alone in the studio with only myself to paint. For many people it was a time of self-reflection and mirrors certainly went up in front of me.
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Changes in my self- image obviously started to provoke changes in my practice, as I became less precious and began to let go of old habits and techniques. I was open to experimentation and it soon became a kind of self-examination whilst working in the immediacy of my change.
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Over the course of the four years my practice moved from literal destruction of my paintings into a more sculptural application with paint, pushing alternative ways to view  painting and ultimately allowing an acceptance of change in my practice and my life

What drew you to the materials you work with, which are quite varied?
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I began painting on glass as a way to express how I saw dad trapped inside his condition. It was like being suspended in moments in time, floating in a kind of mist. I would always begin the painting with a likeness to him but as I progressed the layers of paint would begin to swallow his characteristics. I would wait till the end to discover an unconscious portrait, sometimes still resembling my dad.
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However, I had less positive feelings about self-portraits and they would sit around in my studio gathering dust. At times I felt guilty of being self- indulgent. I began scraping off the semi dried oil paint, which resembled slabs of flesh and slivers of skin.  It became an opportunity to reconstruct myself into abstracted, three- dimensional forms.
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I tried many other methods and mediums to best represent the moment, including glass etching, printmaking, and animations of the prints, some of which will be in the show.

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How did working on the series make you contemplate fatherhood and your own role as a father?
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As a parent I think you are constantly contemplating parenthood and your role in your children’s lives. When I started this series, I was a stay-at-home dad and would often paint from home. My daughter and my son both witnessed their grandad’s illness first hand whilst caring for him. It became a way of making sense for them, to see something being created and evolve out of loss. Their strength and understanding helped me through some difficult times so inevitably they were to become the subjects of a number of works in the show.
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What are you working on now?
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My work mostly comes about as a response to the immediacy of my experiences at the time. It’s rarely a thought through or pre-planned “concept”. After a difficult past four years of dealing with profound and overall change, I am getting to a place where I want to simply paint with detachment. I’m enjoying advancing the process and techniques I’ve discovered and have a continued curiosity about the human form. So at least for now I’m thinking of a spontaneous journey with a series of figurative studies as a form of simple release.
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David Tucker is an emerging painter from North London. Largely inspired by the human condition and form, his work explores the body in fleshy figurative studies.