Asked by his students at St Martin’s School of Art how they might come to paint like Francis Bacon, Joe Tilson would reply: “Grow up in Ireland, get beaten up by sailors. Then you might paint like him.” As the startled young took this on board, their teacher would add: “In art, you’re stuck with your own personality. Who you are is also your fate.”
Tilson, who taught at St Martin’s in London from 1958 until 1963, and has died aged 95, had every reason to hold this view. It was the unpromising twin pillars of Tilson’s upbringing in Lewisham, south-east London – poverty and woodwork – that shaped him, specifically, as an artist.
