Page 5 - Brian Tilbrook - Post Magazine 13-02-22

PROFILE

of Asian cultural sites – in Cambodia, Laos, Macau – in Middlesex, in southeast England. “If you stood now sometimes shown in London’s high-end galleries. On
but even then, he inclined towards the abstract. Any where that ladder is,” he remarks, pointing to the the pantry wall next to his Lamma studio-of-sorts,
lean towards realism was finally killed off, he says, painting’s vanished haystack in Hounslow, “you could the younger Tilbrook has assembled a montage of
by the year he spent painting 50 heritage sites for a be run over by a jet at London airport.” newspaper cuttings about his father’s 1930s exhibitions.
1989 colonial-era government book called Hong Kong The press liked the artistic-conductor angle. “Brush
Heritage (foreword by Jan Morris). hen Brian was a boy, he and his older hour is the busiest time of the day for Mr. Reginald
He has always loved to create trees, however, and brother used to receive a penny each as Tilbrook …” as the droll correspondent from the Daily
at the bottom of the new work he has placed a piece Wweekly pocket money. Before it was handed Mirror put it in 1937. Young Brian, aged five, stares
of coral, acquired years ago before coral harvesting over, his father would hold it up: the goddess Britannia sternly at the camera while his father pretends to be
became questionable. He’s blackened it with acrylic on her throne, gripping what used to be called the daubing a canvas, clad in his uniform.
spray paint: the death of growth. There is also, as there Union Jack. His father would draw a circle. Then he’d A decade later, Brian, by then a pupil at Spring Grove
often is in Tilbrook’s abstracts, a circle. It glows hot tell the boys to draw a circle, too. Grammar School and showing every sign of inherited
white, he explains, “so that you could almost burn your Reginald was a bus conductor whose work was artistic promise, was chosen to design the scenery for
fingers on it”.
On the door of an upstairs room is handwritten in
wobbly script: Almost private studio of sorts more or “ONE WOMAN SAID, ‘I THINK YOUR MURALS ARE DELIGHTFUL,
less. He’s stuck an artist’s palette to it – a private joke BRIAN, BUT I MUST TELL YOU THAT THE SYMBOL FOR
of sorts, as he says “I’ve never used one in my life, I
thought it was a little bit precious.” PROSPERITY IS UPSIDE DOWN.’ AND THE LADY NEXT TO HER
In the corner, above his own work, hangs a small SAID, ‘ISN’T THAT BRILLIANT? NOT MANY PEOPLE REALISE
rural oil painting by his father, Reginald. Long ago,
father and son used to go on countryside expeditions THAT YOU ADD PROSPERITY BY TURNING IT UPSIDE DOWN.’”

12 Post Magazine // February 13, 2022