Opening reception and poetry reading: Thursday, January 30, 6–8 PM. Click to RSVP
Lehmann Maupin presents an exhibition of a new series of landscape paintings by British painter Billy Childish. Childish’s artistic practice is all encompassing, spanning poetry and prose, punk rock music, and photography, printmaking, and painting. Known for his vivid, emotionally charged paintings on warm linen canvas, the artist works quickly and intuitively to realize each work, sketching the underlying composition in charcoal within a hand-drawn frame and using a rich palette of oil paint to render light, shadow, volume, and form. The subjects in Childish’s paintings are often taken from his immediate environment—the River Medway in South East England, self-portraits, the chalk cliffs of Margate, and images of his family make frequent appearances. The artist’s work also veers into the imagined world, with the artist finding inspiration everywhere, from film scenes, to historical photographs, to his own internal dreamscapes. This marks the first exhibition in 2025 at Lehmann Maupin’s temporary space, located at No.9 Cork Street in London’s Mayfair Neighborhood.
In this new series, Childish explores dark landscape scenes that prominently feature the moon. The works on view depict a series of quietly beautiful landscapes as the sun rises and sets; aside from the moon, Childish’s primary subjects include rocky mountainscapes, swimmers immersed in flowing water, snow covered river banks, and pine trees standing tall. At once tangible and surreal, his landscapes forge a connection between this world and the beyond, between the spiritual and the material. In these new works, the artist remembers that connection with the transcendent is often most accessible through the direct experience of natural beauty.
Media Inquiries
Julie Niemi, Associate Director of Public Relations
julie@lehmannmaupin.com
McKenna Quatro Johnson, Communications and Research Associate
mckenna@lehmannmaupin.com