MIKE TUCKER

 

I was born and brought up in South London. I was educated at Dulwich College (where art was dropped from the curriculum at the end of the first year!) I subsequently studied at Battersea College of Technology and at the University of Surrey where I gained a PhD in Theoretical Physics.

 

My wife Sandra and I moved to Gloucestershire with our five children in 1969 where I worked at Berkeley Nuclear Laboratories. By the time of my taking early retirement in 1993 I had been leading a group with the responsibility for demonstrating the continued safe operation of the graphite structures at the heart of all but two of the country’s reactors. This included chairing an industry-wide committee for several years.

 

I was ordained as a Church of England priest in 1985, and took over as Rector of Amberley in Gloucestershire in 1992. I subsequently held a number of additional positions within Gloucester Diocese, including five years as Area Dean, and running a lay training agency focussing on developing relationship skills. I was made an Honorary Canon of Gloucester Cathedral in 1998.

 

As an artist I am self-taught. During the 1970s I held six exhibitions of paintings in Bristol, Gloucester, Stroud, Wotton-under-edge and Uley, either one-man shows or with one or two other artists. For me my commitment to the church pushed art a little into the background, though on going to Amberley I instigated the first of ten biennial “Art in and Around Amberley” exhibitions.

 

More recently I have been part of a group 'Inside-out' comprising six Christian artists - two stone carvers, two textile artists and two painters. We have exhibited together three times in Glouceser twice in Cheltenham, and once each in Bath and Bristol. My recent paintings nearly all stem from topical subjects from which the facets of the Christian gospel and ethics emerge. This is a way I believe in which the presence of God and of Jesus Christ can be sensed in the happenings of the present-day world.

 

Since retiring as Rector of Amberley eight years ago, and despite continuing commitments to the church and keeping tabs on our thirteen grandchildren and three great grandchild, I have been able to pursue painting more seriously and to fulfil an ambition that I have had since leaving school. It’s just that other things in life got in the way!