Opening reception and poetry reading: Thursday, January 30, 6–8 PM. Click to RSVP
Lehmann Maupin presents like a god i love all things, an exhibition of new paintings by British painter Billy Childish. Based in Kent, Childish’s artistic practice is wide ranging and prolific. In addition to painting, the artist moves seamlessly between poetry and prose, punk rock, blues and folk music, photography, and printmaking. Over the course of his decades-long career, he has written and published 5 novels, more than 40 volumes of confessional poetry, and recorded well over 170 LPs. Childish’s paintings are often characterized by their vivid immediacy, painted directly on warm linen canvas using a rich, earthy palette of oil paint. The artist’s subjects are drawn from both his immediate environment—the North Kent landscape and members of his family—as well as further afield, including scenes of northern California and historical photographs, often appearing other-worldly or what Childish has described as dreamscapes. like a god i love all things marks the first exhibition in 2025 at Lehmann Maupin’s temporary space, located at No.9 Cork Street in London’s Mayfair neighborhood.
During the opening reception on January 30th, Childish will stage a poetry reading in the gallery at 7 PM. Concurrent to the exhibition, Viper's Tongue Press will publish a poetry sampler featuring a selection of Childish's poems from the early 1980s to the present, with Tangerine Press producing a signed, limited edition of the book, all hand bound with an original woodcut tipped in.
In Childish’s latest body of work, the winter landscape is his central theme, both wild and serene. The paintings on view comprise a series of quietly beautiful scenes featuring low hanging winter suns, cool mists, and sombre trees. Childish’s compositions are dark, but not gloomy, reflective of the season and glowing with their own internal luminosity. Although mostly devoid of figures, in some canvases wolves make their way out of the woods or deer cross snow-covered fields. In these works, viewers are reminded that life continually moves through its own natural rhythms, even in the seemingly still depths of winter.
At once tangible and surreal, Childish’s landscapes forge a connection between this world and the beyond, between the spiritual and the material. In wolf walking (2024), the artist depicts a small wolf trotting across the snow, as if about to leave the frame on the lefthand side of the composition. The wolf is flanked by a giant tree in the foreground, which appears wind-whipped and devoid of leaves. The tree is masterfully rendered, the movement of the wind captured elegantly in pinks and whites in stark contrast with the brown of the woods behind. Against this tree, Childish casts his wolf as a minor protagonist, dwarfed by the surrounding landscape and playing a small part in a much larger macrocosm.
Other works, such as trees and northern sun (2024) or mist and snow (2025), are devoid of figures altogether, and in these compositions Childish allows the landscape to take centre stage. The only human figure in the exhibition appears in a portrait of the artist himself. Painted in blues, greens, and oranges, the portrait presides over the exhibition space, and the image of Childish in a winter cap and jacket suggests the artist is staring out at a wintery world. As a whole, the works in like a god i love all things remind us of the quiet solace that can be found in darker months, deep in the woods or amidst a frozen field. In these spiritual landscapes, Childish asserts that the transcendent is often most accessible in moments of direct connection with natural beauty, residing always in the world around us.
Media Inquiries
Julie Niemi, Associate Director of Public Relations
julie@lehmannmaupin.com
McKenna Quatro Johnson, Communications and Research Associate
mckenna@lehmannmaupin.com