Whatever he does, he finds the skeleton within the skeleton. And he doesn’t stop there. The man is a phenomenon on the margins of everything, even on the margins of art.
--Jutta Koether. Art Scribe
It is incredible to meet somebody who has such an extraordinary understanding of what they are doing...I don’t think it is unreasonable to align Billy with figures like William Blake.
--Matt Higgs, Director of White Columns Gallary, NY
Some of the worst painting I have ever seen on public show.
--The East Anglian Times
It like he’s never seen a painting before... There’s just nothing there.
--Matthew Collings, TV Presentor
Billy Childish has sworn alligence to prolaterian art at it’s rawest.
--New York Times
In 1977 the 16 year old Billy Childish purposely smashed his own hand with a 3 Ib club hammer and walked out of his job as an apprentice stone mason at the Royal Navel Dockyards Chatham. Over the following 3 years he was accepted no less than 4 times into art schools on ’the genius clause’ (a provision for students who lacked the normal entrance qualifications but showed exceptional artist potential), but this was not a happy union.Continually at odds with the art school bureaucracy, Childish was finally expelled from St Martins School of art in 1981 for refusing to paint pictures within the art school as "he did not wish to become contaminated" and publishing poetry that one tutor described as "the worst type of toilet wall humour I have ever seen." Proud to be thrown out, Childish then commenced 15 years of ’painting on the dole’.
Since then he has produced a staggering body of work, including 3 novels, 100 LP records, over 40 collections of poetry and painting an estimated 2500 plus paintings, meanwhile carving himself a reputation as one of Britain’s leading independent and untamed cultural voices.
This timely book focuses on the art of Billy Childish, for the first time brining together a selection of paintings from this ’visi6nary from the backwaters.’ As in his poetry and music, Childish’s paintings are as brutal and Challenging as they are lyrical and moving.
