Posted in Minoli
8th October 2024
When Minoli celebrated the 10th Anniversary of the London showroom last year, Jonathon Minoli wanted something original and creative to mark the occasion. To achieve this, he turned to a longstanding friend of Minoli and client, Rebecca Tucker – a renowned interior designer and artist – to commission a painting in Rebecca’s own signature style that would reference George Street in Marylebone in some way, the location of the Minoli London showroom.

The finished painting was revealed at a prestigious event at Home House on Portman Square, London, W1, on 12th September, when over 100 guests joined Jonathon and the Minoli Team for an evening co-hosted by Paul Denning and Tim Harvey with the Yamaha Racing World Superbike team.
Rebecca is a Lancashire born and London based contemporary painter. Her consistent focus for several years has been to explore the breadth of the spectrum between representation and abstraction. She explores the concept of simultaneously examining both organic and abstract forms as defined by negative space. Taking something that is not there, the essentially abstract space between things, and making that the subject of the paintings.
Each series of work starts with a subject but progresses towards abstraction as she explores the subject and renders it in two dimensions, examining line and shape, negative space and the effects of light, as a result the link to the subject slowly becomes stretched and obscured to varying degrees.
We asked Rebecca to talk about her approach to the commission and how she developed the themes within:
“As a painter who works very much on instinct, a commission can be a tricky task. Each painting I start takes on its own life and will go off in directions I may not have initially anticipated, so ‘painting to order’ is not something that I can ever really accommodate! But when Jonathon Minoli approached me for a commission to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Minoli’s George Street showroom, with a wonderfully open brief that was based on allowing me to bring together elements surrounding Minoli’s history, the George Street location and my own painting style, I jumped at the opportunity. We met and discussed the size of the piece, and I got a good idea of which of my previous work he was particularly drawn to. We discussed the importance of the launch of Minoli’s London showroom and how the 10th anniversary was a particularly notable milestone for the company. The building that houses the showroom is a beautiful period property, and we were both keen to try and get the lions that sit on twin corbels on the façade of the building into the painting somehow.
“I opted for the format of bringing several smaller paintings together to form one larger piece, which enabled me to include the nods to George Street, including the street scene; a landscape that represents Minoli’s Italian routes; the beautiful lions heads, all alongside the leafy sections of the work drawn from the foliage along George Street that are representative of my own painting practice, and closely reflect the calm and contemplative atmosphere that I like to imbue my work with.
“A muted palette of greys and whites, set off by the grain of the wooden panels that I paint on, ensured the coherence and continuity of the whole piece, whilst allowing me to reference the various different aspects that are synonymous with Minoli and the George Street showroom. I paint with very fluid paint, to ensure that each layer has a transparency and depth, showing the layers beneath. I paint shadow and negative space, using washes of diluted white paint, against the background, to bring the image to life.”

The painting will take pride of place in Minoli’s Head Office in Oxford and will sit beautifully with the interior design style of that environment.
Rebecca Tucker’s work can be viewed at www.rebeccatucker.co.uk and she welcomes visitors by appointment to her painting studio at ASC Studios, Grafton Road, West Croydon. Please contact her on info@rebeccatucker.co.uk for enquiries on current work, or to discuss a commission.