Willy Tirr (1915 - 1991)

The words sensitivity and power have been used frequently to describe the man and his work, and to these must be added honesty. Willy's expression in both word and paint was honest and direct, without conceit or intent to impress. Unlike some artists Willy did not adopt the persona of an artist; he was a retiring and modest man and one of our best and most interesting watercolour painters.

Why then does he not enjoy the celebrity of those contemporaries with whom he shared exhibitions, such as Terry Frost, Peter Lanyon, Patrick Heron and Patrick Caulfield, and why does he remain relatively unknown outside Yorkshire? Willy was a private and modest man who never sought celebrity or affluence. Self- presentation and `networking' were activities as alien to his nature as the verb was unknown in his day. He saw his work as an end in itself and for the last thirty years of his life that work had been almost entirely in abstraction, in watercolour, oil and raised canvases, largely appealing to a restricted market. There was often a brooding power and allusiveness to his work, especially in early days, which people did not associate with watercolour. Furthermore he never left Leeds, a great industrial city but seen from London, that centre of the English art world, as a provincial backwater. Nevertheless it was in Leeds where he and Erika found the security and stability they had lost in youth.

Willy's early work had been representational and figurative, and one might speculate that because he never had a formal art school education he lacked the skills to develop figuration. This is manifestly not the case. He had the talent and if he had possessed the will, like many self-taught artists, he could have commanded any style he set his mind to.