Billy Childish Quoted as Blowing Smoke - Painting 1

A series of paintings I'm making in response to a quote in the book "To Ease My Troubled Mind - the Authorised Unauthorised History of Billy Childish" by Ted Kessler. Eventually this series of paintings will be part of a display at The Camden Market Free Art Man dedicated to my response to the following text in Ted Kessler’s book about Billy Childish:
“When they paint together, is Johnstone like the rhythm section and Childish the frontman?”:
Billy: “No, I’m the guitarist, the singer, the drummer - rhythm is very important in painting. Edgeworth might play a bit of bass on it.”

I’m the Edgeworth Johnstone that Childish is quoted about. Billy’s a good friend of mine and we get on well, but what he’s quoted as saying about me and my apparent lack of artistic contribution to the collaborative paintings we make together under the name Heckel’s Horse is untrue, uncalled for, derogatory and an insult. I don’t know how accurate, if at all, the quote is. It doesn’t matter, what matters to me is what’s in the book. My proportionate response to this minorest of first world problems is a truck load of paintings contesting it plastered all over the internet and Camden Market. There’ll also be block prints, posters, a full-colour sixteen page booklet and a CD concept album full of songs dedicated to this single issue. The cover of the album will be the big acrylic painting next to me in the video:

The album might take a month or two, but everything else should be ready and dry in three to four weeks max. I’ll hopefully have enough for the first Camden display in two weeks if I have enough acrylic paintings. Acrylic paintings take about a day to dry properly. Oil paintings, even thinly painted ones, can take weeks. Before anyone asks, no I don’t have anything better to do with my time. Credit and legacy have their value, and ultimately, this will all work out for the best once the Camden display’s finished and filmed.

For anyone not familiar with The Camden Market Free Art Man, passers-by are offered a free artwork of their choice in exchange for a one minute video interview for my YouTube channel. The interviews nearly always overrun and the core questions are nearly always the same four. This Camden display, though, has an extra question at the end where I introduce them to the “Celebrity Recognition Scoreboard”. A highly visible display placard where I’ll publicly keep track of how many interviewees have heard of Heckel’s Horse, Billy and me individually to find out who’s most and least famous of the three. Like the vertical scoreboards they have in pub darts, but with three columns. Here’s the extra question:

Had you ever heard of Heckel’s Horse, Billy Childish or The Camden Market Free Art Man before today? - At which point I’ll give them the new booklet, a quick explanation and record their responses on the Celebrity Recognition Scoreboard.

Billy and I have been making these Heckel’s Horse paintings together for the last thirteen years and just painted our most recent one last week. I’ve gone into more detail about all this in other posts and videos, but the new news today is that the series of oil paintings about all this is finally underway. I painted the first two today and plan to paint a further six in the coming week. If any of the ones on 30 x 24 inch stretched canvas sell I’ll probably make some more, but either way there’ll be plenty on paper and cardboard to fill a display at Camden. Come to Camden, hope I’m there and if so, get yourself a free painting!
Before starting the first oil painting today, I glued a pop art version of the same composition next to me as a reference. Similar looking block prints to come. We're coming in to another heatwave in London. We're coming into another heatwave in London, part of the reason I wasn’t at Camden today. Saturday is the busiest day. I hate missing Saturday’s but I saw a video on suncream’s and how ineffective a lot of them seemed to be after testing. Even expensive ones. There’s not much shade standing on the bridge all day.

If it’s cooler tomorrow, I’ll take the new acrylic poster to Camden as a warm up for the dedicated “Billy Childish Quoted as Blowing Smoke” day. It'll be the first themed day at Camden since Nirvana day.