RIP Tony Tomlin

I have just heard that Tony Tomlin has died. He had Parkingson's and I hadn't seen him for a couple of years but every now and again I would still think about him and his work, as his life had often impacted upon mine, just as it had so many other people in the local arts community.

His art tutor, supporter and mentor at City College for many years Kevin O'Hare once fondly called him 'a craftsman and master of crappy materials'. Tony came to the old Jacob Kramer College (Soon to be Leeds College of Art and then Leeds Art University) in the 1980s and was on the part-time Fine Art and Craft course. He had a unique vision that never left him of a world where media celebrities cohabited with the people of Chapeltown; where his particular take on religion was mixed with his respect for art and artists and where the various tutors and lecturers of the courses he would take, were drawn and annotated by Tony, in his attempts to measure and tie down why these 'educated' people were themselves artists. He was often on a quest to establish the source of 'genius'. This could be the reason behind sports success or it could be that someone he knew personally had achieved a level of educational clout, that must have as far as he was concerned, have been because they too were a genius. The fact that they were now in a position to teach him, was something he needed to interrogate. His quest to find some sort of truth was at times heartbreaking, as it mixed an instinctive grasp of how society branded some people as outsiders and others as insiders, with a failure to see how he himself had been categorised. For many he was an outsider artist, but he was always trying to get the qualifications that would give him a licence to be a professional artist, an insider.

Tony operated as a reminder that the making of art in many ways cant be taught and that creativity is something that can be owned by anyone. He could make even the most basic drawing interesting, his comment on the drawing of scissors below is sort of blindingly obvious but at the same time confusing. He would have been proud of undertaking the exercise and his use of shadow is dramatic and clearly visually observed. He tells us, "DRAWN WITHOUT THE USE OF A RUBBER AND PENCIL", so how was it drawn then? Is this a biro drawing? The exercise was for Tony proof that he was undertaking a professional program of study and the shadow cast by the scissors is indeed proof that he could objectively observe the world around him when he had to.

Tony Tomlin: Scissors

Tony Tomlin: Johan Cruff

Tony was well known for his text and image work. They combine so that the text not just annotates the image, to both inform us of what it is and how Tony thinks about it, but it also develops a textural surface, one that his line drawing is physically embedded into. In the image above, 'Kick a ball' would have been a reference to playing football as a child on the street of Chapeltown, the dates are both Cruff's time of greatness as a player for 'Ajax of Amsterdam' and a time when Tony was young. Tony comments on his own attempt to create this homage, "BAD" ART FOR CRUFF. The way that Tony could seamlessly integrate a childlike memory with the facts of a football fan, his amused commentary on his own work and directness in drawing eyes, noses and mouths as symbols rather than portraiture, make his Johan Cruff drawing, a product of both an everyday experience for Tony and an attempt to portray an emblematic presence of a wonderful footballer. The wisps of hair, he has drawn, that frame the top of the image, do though somehow conjure up something of Cruff's look from that time; a boy like presence behind the genius who took ball control onto another level. Tony, as has already been pointed out, was a romantic, always trying to measure himself against the attainment of the lone artist.

Tony asked questions of those around him, questions that I found difficult to answer. Who was fooling who? In the 1940s Cecil Collins wrote his text 'The vision of the fool'. The fool was a role that Collins identified with the artist and the poet. He stated that 'the fool' embodies ‘the eternal virginity of spirit, which in the dark winter of the world, continually proclaims the existence of a new life, gives faithful promise of the spring of an invisible Kingdom, and the coming of light’. Was this what we all saw in Tony's work? Perhaps, but I doubt it. Tony was a messy man. I had problems with him sometimes, as he did at times present difficulties for others around him, particularly young women. He had no 'turn off switch' and his texts were at times very disturbing, a quasi religious take on women in particular could be read as misogynist. Whether he intended it or not, he could cause considerable offence. There was another issue and that was how his favourable reception by the established Leeds art community, was read by those who stood on the edge of that community and who felt slighted and mis-represented by the fact that Tony was black. I was asked several times why were white people praising the work of someone that was obviously mentally challenged? This was a difficult question to answer, did I not think that by showcasing his work black people as a whole were being positioned as 'outsider artists', who made work by some sort of intuition, as opposed to the reality of many black artists who made work to directly challenge and seek to highlight how a white dominated post-colonial patriarchal society had treated them. Exhibiting Tony's work, it was argued, was an easy way out for the white establishment, as it didn't challenge the status quo and reinforced the notion of the black artist as an outsider and not being capable of being a 'professional' practitioner.

Tony's work when read as a type of outsider art, did show us new ways of seeing things, but did this simply titivate the jaded taste buds of overly sophisticated, well educated arts professionals? I have in the past had to question myself several times, as to why I was fascinated by his work. Perhaps his very existence was a challenge to my own reading of myself as an artist.

I was spoken to once by a disgruntled artist, and told that some people within the Leeds arts community treated Tony as if he was a pet, 'Wasn't it lovely that he could perform such tricks?', they said. I thought they had read the situation in the wrong way, but I could also see why they might have. On the other hand I knew that several people treated Tony with great respect and that they really valued his vision and personal stance on what it was to be an artist. For some his work gave them a unique insight into a mind that was different, a visual mind that had emerged from the streets of Chapeltown, but which had also engaged passionately with the art educational system. It was an engagement that had thrown up a strange anomaly, the fact that originality and difference did not achieve high grades and that the reality was that to pass an 'A' level or other art qualification at that time, what you had to do was show that you knew who was part of the accepted art canon, and that you could in effect 'copy' the work or processes of those artists that you had academically studied. These were all hard questions for someone like myself who was firmly fixed into that art education system and who had a strong belief in the power of art as a transformative discipline.

I drew his portrait once. He looked at me strangely and made me uneasy. His glasses had such thick lenses that they reflected the outside world back at you. As I drew I fell into his whirlpool eyes and realised I had been hypnotised. He told me I was a genius and then asked me if I wanted to buy a piece of his work. Somewhere I still have his mono-print drawing of a Mexican wrestler's face mask, entitled 'Jesus goes to Berlin for Hardcore Music'. I don't know what it means but it challenges me in ways that Tracy Emin's mono-prints have never done. Jesus operating in disguise as a Mexican wrestler, opens up a reading of Christianity that I had not previously thought about, and perhaps that is the point; Tony for all his confusing ways, was always going to challenge us and our assumptions about the world. 

Tony Tomlin: 'Jesus goes to Berlin for Hardcore Music'. 

So rest in peace Tony, a unique individual who in my life caused much heart searching, and who also gave much joy and richness. He left us with several conundrums, such as; 'who can be an artist', 'what is it that artists should do', 'who says what is good or bad art' and 'can art be taught?'  He was a reminder that the pattern of humanity is sometimes cut as a difficult fit. 

See also: 

RIP Tony Baker In many ways Tony Baker understood Tony Tomlin and supported him far more than I ever did and they are now joined in that post life world of the dead, I hope they have found each other again and that they have been joined in their companionship with Graham Head; Tony Tomlin's tutor when he was at the Jacob Kramer College and who was a long time advocate of his work and who passed away this time last year.