Satomi 2020

Wilf Tilley

Ink and oil on canvas over wood panel
22.5cm x 18cm
Produced in 2020

Donated to the Collection in 2021 by the artist

Wilf Tilley was born in the north of England. He began his career as an actor at age 16, with the National Youth Theatre and worked briefly at the Manchester Library Theatre. He began painting and selling work at the age of 17, held a first solo exhibition, at the age of 27, at the AIR Gallery, Shaftesbury Avenue, London, and while a student at the Royal College of Art, co-organized fundraising exhibitions for CND and the anti-apartheid movement. An interest – while at the RCA – in the anatomical drawings of Leonardo da Vinci eventually led to research on neuronal modelling in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics, at Oxford.

Wilf held a first retrospective, “The Neuro-mytheologian And Other Works”, in 2003, and has a second opening in Tokyo in late November 2017. While based in Tokyo, he has family in Derbyshire, and visits the UK regularly where his daughter works as a junior doctor.