NEW YORK, NY.- Lehmann Maupin is presenting its fourth exhibition with British artist Billy Childish, a prolific painter, writer, and musician. The artist’s vivid oil paintings offer fragmented fields of intense color applied frenetically, often leaving charcoal marks and the linen canvas exposed, further emphasizing the immediate and intuitive nature of Childish’s work.
Working in traditional genres such as portraiture, still life, and landscape, Childish’s paintings are spiritually charged expressions that come from a place of deep personal meaning. These powerful works, including unabashed nudes, self-portraits, and dense woodland scenes, honor the simple nature of being and in the process transcend the ordinary.
Eschewing any hint of post-modernist irony in his work, he allows the basics of personal expression to come forth through the fundamentals of painting. A self-proclaimed “Radical Traditionalist,” Childish has said, “The reason I honor tradition is that it provides a form and structure that allows freedom—the ego is subjugated and the requirements of the painting are met. Tradition is not to be worshipped or adored; it is a vehicle to take you to new places, or we could say to arrive at the perennial.”
While he is occasionally associated with British groups like the Stuckists and YBAs, Childish does not see himself as connected to a particular contemporary movement; however, he is highly regarded and well known by his peers, including renowned artists Peter Doig and Tracey Emin. Childish’s influences range from artists whose work he admires, including Vincent van Gogh, Kurt Schwitters, Edvard Munch, Mikhail Larionov, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Many of these artists worked outside of specific movements or groups, or were held in high regard during their own lifetimes, but later came to be cited as influences to subsequent generations.
Billy Childish was born in Chatham, England in 1959. After leaving secondary school at age 16 he worked at the Naval Dockyard in Chatham as an apprentice stonemason. Initially denied an interview to the local art school, he produced hundreds of drawings that gained him entry to London’s St. Martin's School of Art. Childish's defiance to authority led to his eventual expulsion from art school in 1981. He then embarked on an artistic odyssey, exploring a broad range of worldly themes including war, history, and social protest. Over the last 35 years, Childish has gained something of a cult status worldwide. In addition to writing and publishing over 40 volumes of confessional poetry and 5 novels, Childish has recorded over 100 LPs, and painted many hundreds of paintings. Childish has had solo and group exhibitions internationally with recent solo exhibitions in New York, London, and Berlin. His work was featured in the major exhibitions Billy Childish: Unknowable but Certain at the ICA in London and White Columns in New York, both in 2010. The artist lives and works in Kent, United Kingdom.
