Grayson Perry, the Turner-prize winning artist, has spoken of the troubled relationship he had with his mother and her mental health problems.
The artist, 58, did not attend the funeral of his mother Jean Dines, who died a week short of her 80th birthday after suffering a stroke in 2016.
Mrs Dines, who had four children, became estranged from her son following the publication of his 2006 memoirs in which he disclosed his unhappy childhood growing up in Essex.
Perry has previously spoken about his father Tom leaving home when he was aged four, after his mother had an affair with their milkman Alan whom she later married.
In an interview with Radio Times, Perry said: “Only half of her children went to the funeral, and that was out of morbid duty.”
He added: “She was… a difficult woman. And mentally ill, and it wasn’t our job to fix that.” Perry added his sister Helen described the service as “one of the most inappropriate things I have ever been to”.
Earlier this month, Perry and the Holburne museum in Bath, which is planning a major exhibition in 2020 of his early work, put out a joint appealfor the public to turn out sideboards and attics for any pieces he made between 1983 and 1994, including anyone who remembers buying from a mop-haired Essex biker, or his alter ego, the ribboned and bowed Claire.
“I was very excited when the Holburne Museum proposed a show of my ceramics from the 80s and early 90s as it would also be an opportunity to find and record the beginnings of my career,” the potter said.
“My record-keeping hasn’t improved much; I recently moved house and found five pots in the loft which had been unseen since the 80s and a dozen plates from the early 90s in a cupboard under a sink!”
His wife, the psychotherapist Philippa Perry, revealed on Facebook that she had accidentally sent two of her husband’s drawings to Oxfam in a bundle of old clothes.
The charity shop phoned to check if the gift was intended, and the artist not only said they could keep the drawings, but agreed to sign them.
Perry, who in 2003 became the first potter to win the Turner prize, is presenting a four-part TV documentary series on the ceremonies of birth, coming of age, marriage and death.
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