Lucian Freud's muse 'Big Sue' sketches a new career in art
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Version 0 of 1. Sue Tilley is one of the most recognisable muses in modern British art: the nude model with more than most on show. Now Tilley, who is known widely as "Big Sue" and who was the subject of Lucian Freud's 1995 oil painting, Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, has taken up art herself and is planning a new future. Tilley, 57, modelled for Freud during an important four-year period in his career in the early 1990s. Today, as then, she also works four days a week at a London jobcentre and until recently had been saving for an eventual retirement on the Isle of Wight, where she hoped to open a tearoom. But, after turning to sketching and drawing cartoons six months ago, Tilley has decided she wants to work as an illustrator. "I always disliked anything I drew because I wanted it to look more arty. Then suddenly I found I had the confidence not to bother with all that," said Tilley, who became the friend of the renowned performance artist Leigh Bowery in 1982 and was then picked out by Freud as a life model because, she believes, she represented good value for money ("He got a lot of flesh"). Ten years ago she sold a sketch Freud had made of her for £26,000 and in 2008 Benefits Supervisor Sleeping itself sold for a record £17.2m at auction. She has described posing for Freud as a very entertaining pastime and she mourned his death in July 2011. He was, she said, "the most amusing person I've ever met". His canvases of her took up to nine months to complete and Tilley had to turn up at weekends and as soon as she clocked off from work in the evenings. "It was just very interesting to get lots of chat, lots of stories, to get taken to nice restaurants and get to meet all the other people he painted," Tilley said. But one of their artistic encounters was delayed by a trip she had taken to India. When she returned she was so brown that Freud, with his interest in the washed out hues of pale, English skin, was not interested. She had to wait for her suntan to fade. Freud was also not in favour of Tilley's tattoos, of which she has three. Before he picked up his brush to paint the canvas he would first paint out her tattoos. Earlier this year, Tilley started to draw, following encouragement from an artist friend, Rui Ferreira, whom she met at a charity life drawing class. She is now sketching in crayons every day and loving it. "I did train to be an art teacher when I left school because I had done well at art, but I never used to be happy with what I did, so I gave it up completely years and years ago," said Tilley. "Then my friend Rui encouraged me to do some cartoons. This time I carried on for 20 minutes or so and thought they were quite good. I put them on Facebook and lots of people said they liked them." This month Tilley has completed a series of sketches of the stars of a new show, Fashion Victim – The Musical!, created by her friend Toby Rose. "I saw Toby's show and it's really good, so I agreed to sketch the cast," said Tilley, who has always loved theatre and who was portrayed on stage herself in the Boy George musical Taboo, a show set largely in Bowery's infamous London nightclub, where Tilley once worked as cashier. "I like working in crayons, because it is quite tidy. I have tried paint, but I am very messy and I am really rubbish at clearing up," she said, admitting that the work of her hero Quentin Blake is a probable influence on her drawing style. "I will retire when I can afford it and then I would like to illustrate children's stories and stay in London, which I love," she said. "I live in Bethnal Green now, after living in the same flat in Camden for 30 years. "Until now my whole life has been accidentally falling into things. But this drawing is not difficult and I am in charge and I find it really pleasant," added Tilley. Fashion Victim – The Musical! runs from this weekend in a specially created catwalk arena inside the Cinema Museum in south London until 6 July. |