Billy Childish’s name—“Childish,” as in childlike—seems to have destined much of his life: unruly, naïve, willful, and freewheeling. Abused as a child, he dropped out of Saint Martin’s School of Art as a young man and lived on benefits for 15 years. All the while, he painted, played rock music, released more than 100 albums, and published more than forty collections of poetry. He was also the first love and artistic mentor of the celebrated female avant-garde artist Tracey Emin, and has been close friends with the artist Peter Doig for many years.
Billy Childish, The Submerged Birch, 2017. Courtesy of the artist and neugerriemschneider. Installation view of Billy Childish: Rock ’n’ Roll Poet and the Spirit of Heaven and Earth, He Art Museum, 2024. He painted and made work in solitude for years. It was not until his appearance at Frieze London in 2012 that his work began to receive broader recognition and attention within the art world. At Art Basel Hong Kong this March, a crowd was constantly gathered around his classically inflected landscapes; in a sluggish market, his paintings sold out quickly.
At the same time, Childish’s first solo exhibition in a Chinese art museum opened at the He Art Museum in Shunde, Foshan, Guangdong. We took the opportunity to speak with him about art and his legendary life. Installation view of Billy Childish: Rock ’n’ Roll Poet and the Spirit of Heaven and Earth, He Art Museum, 2024. “I paint because I like painting, I write because I like writing, and I make music for the same reason: not to please other people, and not to annoy them, but simply for myself.”
That was Childish’s opening remark. The artist’s distinctly “the world is all about me, me, me” quality was unmistakable. Born in 1959, he is now 65, and the eternal boyishness remains conspicuous. Installation view of Billy Childish: Rock ’n’ Roll Poet and the Spirit of Heaven and Earth, He Art Museum, 2024. Billy Childish, Cypress, Morning, 2018, collection of the He Art Museum. Wu Guanzhong, Pine Grove, 1997, collection of the He Art Museum. For this exhibition at the He Art Museum, he presented 25 works. Set alongside them was a selection of Chinese landscape paintings from the museum’s collection, whose atmosphere closely accords with the exhibition’s title, Rock ’n’ Roll Poet and the Spirit of Heaven and Earth.
“If my work gives Chinese viewers a pleasurable experience of looking, that would be perfect. The museum’s tranquil atmosphere and the distinctive sense of space created by its architecture make my paintings look more alive, more spirited, than they usually do.”
“From the age of 14, I studied Taoism for several years. I like the idea in Chinese culture that ‘great mountains and rivers make people feel immeasurably small.’ I was also surprised by how unexpectedly well my work entered into dialogue with Chinese landscape painting.” Childish said. Billy Childish, On a Willow Tree, Kronstadt, 1901, 2013. Billy Childish, The Boatmen of the Lea, 1920, 2013. There is a brooding, solitary beauty in Childish’s paintings. They recall classical landscape painting in their attention to detail—the dense woods and rivers, moors and dead trees of a rainy English day. They also contain distorted edges and surreal people and animals, with traces of the twentieth-century masters Van Gogh, Munch, and Magritte.
Installation view of Billy Childish: Rock ’n’ Roll Poet and the Spirit of Heaven and Earth, He Art Museum, 2024. One of Billy Childish’s record covers; the woman in the center is his wife, Julia. “People often ask me where the scenes in my paintings come from. Although they are often based on real places, I still think of them as dreamlike, as if they could be anywhere. But many works begin in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.”
“That’s where I met my wife, who is of Black, Native American, and British descent. I underwent a great deal of spiritual healing there, and saw many landscapes from the region’s past, along with people from the past and the dead.” Billy Childish, Gray Wolf, 2020. “In the Forest at Night,” “Gray Wolf,” “The Submerged Birch”—the poetic, dreamlike titles of Childish’s works also suit one of his many identities: poet.
He said that he generally preferred not to talk too much about the stories behind his paintings, because he wanted viewers to approach them with an open mind and allow the works to unfold through their own perspectives. Billy Childish, The Forest at Night, 2021. “They’re like dream worlds. I usually give a painting a very simple, descriptive title. Sometimes I give a work a more poetic title, a resonance prompted by my own response to the painting.”
He said he particularly liked The Forest at Night and Gray Wolf in the exhibition. To him, these paintings reveal a kind of awakening in the unconscious world. Lin Fengmian, Dwelling Deep in the Autumn Woods, date unknown, collection of the He Art Museum, in dialogue with Billy Childish’s Marsh Landscape. Billy Childish, Marsh Landscape, 2022. Childish spent his childhood in Kent, England, and to this day he continues to record, through painting, landscapes that return to him in flashes: the cypress beside his home, rivers, open woods, and wild animals.
He has painted marshland scenery many times, using canvases of different sizes and interpreting it in different styles. This painting is a view from his house toward the river. Although it appears to depict wilderness, what interested him most was a small stretch of coastline surrounded by industrial buildings—something he deliberately chose not to show. “Like Van Gogh ignoring the modern world,” he said. Installation view of Billy Childish: Rock ’n’ Roll Poet and the Spirit of Heaven and Earth, He Art Museum, 2024. Billy Childish, Flowers, 2021. Van Gogh has influenced Childish profoundly since childhood, and the flower paintings in the exhibition were made directly under his influence.
This series was not painted in his studio. He made it on Sundays, returning to the house in Kent where his mother had lived.
“When I was 9, my mother read me Lust for Life—a biography of Van Gogh. I still remember a printed image of Sunflowers hanging in our kitchen,” Childish recalled. Billy Childish, Orange Gerbera, 2015. In Britain, a “Sunday painter” means an amateur painter. For a long time, Childish painted for his mother only on Sundays. His return to her former home was also a way of ensuring that, whenever he wished, he could continue to paint for his mother, for himself, and for the things he loved in the same plainspoken, grounded way.
“I often gave my mother flowers. She made ceramic pots, usually based on designs I drew for her—cats or Bodhisattvas. I would put the flowers in one of the pots and paint the whole arrangement. It all became part of our story as mother and son.” As he spoke, he sank into the warmth of the memory. Billy Childish, Tea Drinker, High Atlas, 2007. Billy Childish, The Drinker, 1996. Childish was born into a household steeped in art but not particularly happy. He describes his artist father as a “complex, antisocial narcissist.” Whenever his father was drunk, he beat Childish and his mother, leaving his childhood in a constant struggle beneath the shadow of violence.
Childish’s early oil paintings include many depictions of drinkers, modeled on the father he both loved and hated. The contradiction was that, under his father’s influence, art also became the bright spot and salvation of his life.
“As far back as I can remember, I’ve always been painting. My father and older brother were painters, and my younger brother and son are too. I knew I wanted to be an artist from the age of 6. We had lots of art books at home, readily available, so I saw many famous paintings when I was very young. I began painting in oils at 12, and I’ve continued ever since,” he said. Billy Childish, Lake, 2017. Billy Childish, Frozen River, 2018. The frozen lake and cabin are deeply connected to the home where he lived as a child and the surrounding landscape. Sadly, in addition to being abused by his father, Childish was repeatedly assaulted at the age of 9 by a male family friend while he was vacationing with his family, without their knowledge. At the time, he said nothing to anyone.
The trauma of his childhood led to a diagnosis of dyslexia at 16 and forced him to leave secondary school. Afterward, Childish became a stonemason’s apprentice at the naval shipyard in his hometown. During his six months as an apprentice, he produced an astonishing number of paintings—600. Those works earned him special admission to Saint Martin’s School of Art. Peter Doig, Wild Billy Childish and the Musicians of the British Empire. Billy Childish, left, and Peter Doig, right, sign records together. While at school, he became close friends with Peter Doig, now one of the most prominent artists in contemporary art. They shared a love of Van Gogh, Munch, and blues music.
But the good times did not last. Because of his unconventional personality and contempt for authority, he was expelled from Saint Martin’s in 1982. Billy Childish and Tracey Emin. Tracey Emin, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995, 1995. When the work was first exhibited, Billy Childish’s name appeared prominently among the names listed. That same year, he met Emin, another fiercely independent spirit, then studying fashion at Medway College of Design. They quickly fell in love.
Their relationship lasted more than six years, from 1982 to 1987. Emin later said in an interview, “The time I spent ‘slumming it’ with Billy Childish, living by the River Medway, had the most profound influence on my art.” Billy Childish in Shinjuku, Japan. A selection of record covers released by Billy Childish. After meeting Emin, he painted freely, played in rock bands, wrote poetry and novels, and lived on social benefits.
He also enjoyed withdrawing from society, retreating into his own small world and spending 15 years in a wild, unrestrained fashion. In 2000, he and the artist Thomson launched the “Stuckist” art movement. Its inspiration came from Emin’s assessment of his work, recorded in one of Childish’s poetry collections: “Your paintings are stuck, you are stuck!”
“—Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!” (“Your paintings are stuck, you are stuck! – Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!”). Childish’s reading list. In fact, Childish’s work has rarely been stuck. He moves among painting, music, poetry, literature, film, and other media; the forms continue to flow into and nourish one another.
“If I see something I find interesting, I want to merge with it through painting, to feel the connection between the physical world and the spiritual world. I’m also interested in elements of sound, painting, and spoken language. That is the common thread in everything I make: sensing a world filled with spirit, continually discovering forms of creation worthy of wonder.”
“I also like challenging different media. My songs are not poems, and my poems are not paintings. But sometimes they can translate into one another, living together.” Billy Childish’s children in Kent, 2020. Billy Childish, Three Birches, 2015, with Billy Childish and his daughter walking across the painting. After the hormonally charged years of youthful rebellion, this “cool guy,” now entering late middle age, likes to talk about his children and wife, and lives a simple life with his family.
“My son often paints in my studio, and sometimes my 14-year-old daughter comes too. My expectations of them are very simple: I just hope they treat people politely and embrace the whole world with a calm mind,” Childish said. Billy Childish in his studio. His current studio occupies a large eighteenth-century Georgian building. The place is, in fact, the shipyard where he worked as a stonemason’s apprentice after leaving high school at 16.
His unruly youth seems to remain in his life in this way, quietly urging him to work with the same exuberance he had when he was young. Childish told us with a laugh, “It’s very cold here in winter, and too hot in summer. My desk is covered with half-used tubes of paint, brushes, and rags—a complete mess. It’s difficult for me to tell which color belongs to which tube.”
“I have a kettle here. Every day when I arrive, I can make a cup of green tea or a pot of coffee first, and then start painting the piles of pictures and canvases. My newest paintings are lined up around the room until they are dry enough to stack or to be shipped to a gallery for exhibition.” Billy Childish, Coastal Trees, 2022. At the end of the interview, we asked how he had gone from a 16-year-old school dropout to his current success. He shrugged slightly and said matter-of-factly, “I arrived here naturally. I never worked toward it.
“Of course, I’ve also made some influential friends in the art world, and they gave me a great deal of professional help. I didn’t need to depart from my own path; I only had to keep my head down and make work. So I feel very lucky that my artistic identity has never changed.” Image credits: He Art Museum, the artist, and neugerriemschneider. Photographs by Rikard Österlund, Liu Xiangli, and Wang Yuchao.