Reating Soldier 2014

Curator: Billy Childish, the British artist, created this acrylic on canvas painting, "Resting Soldier," in 2014. What are your first impressions? Editor: It strikes me as both weary and defiant. The colours are muted yet bold, and that abstracted form hints at a profound interiority, a soldier stripped down to emotional essence. Curator: Childish has long been associated with a revival of expressionist and fauvist tendencies. This painting definitely showcases that interest through gestural brushwork. The rough application almost feels punk. Do you see connections in the symbols he's using? Editor: Absolutely. The pipe becomes more than a mundane object, it’s an invocation of the contemplative man—linking to archetypes like the thinker or even a classical sage, placed incongruously on this figure of military duty. There is this weight of inherited expectation. Curator: And the very act of representing a "resting" soldier undermines traditional war portraiture which historically glorified action and conquest. This feels deliberately anti-establishment, in line with Childish's long running public image. Editor: The posture contributes too, doesn’t it? A leaning figure suggests a burden. Then there’s his eye, an open yet unseeing hollow: absent and haunted simultaneously. That emptiness carries such potent symbolic charge. The face hints at disillusionment, perhaps even trauma, lingering beneath that olive drab uniform. Curator: Childish challenges art world conventions. The Childish’s politics always remained an interest. Even with abstraction, can be a powerful way to comment on society's relationship to violence. Editor: True. "Resting Soldier", offers up visual icons with staying power; the fatigue of a soldier as a emblem. Ultimately, it resonates as something much deeper than a simple portrait of one individual. Curator: Indeed. Thanks for giving us your perspective. Editor: My pleasure. These visual artefacts carry complex stories, even within their apparent simplicity.