I grew up in a family that was all about Art, with a capital A, and it’s taken me a long time to allow myself to use the title “artist” for myself. My parents met at Middlesbrough Art College in the late 1950s (my father is the painter and printmaker William Tillyer), and the smell of home will always be paint, paper, turps and printing ink. It’s only as I’ve grown older that I’ve really appreciated how unusual my childhood was—avoiding the etching acid in the bathroom, attending exhibition openings, being allowed to play with all sorts of art materials and generally soaking it up by osmosis rather than actively taking an interest. I spent hours drawing horses and making up stories, but mostly because I was obsessed with wanting (or sometimes wanting to be) a pony, so the idea of being an artist when I grew up never really featured; I wanted to be a detective like Sherlock Holmes or a three-day event rider or the blonde one in ABBA—in fact I’m not sure I ever seriously considered the idea of being a grown-up!
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