 God Is an Atheist: She Doesn't Believe in Me, by Bill Lewis, between 1997 and 2001. Bill Lewis (born August 1, 1953) is an artist, poet, publisher and mythographer, a founder-member (and namer) of The Medway Poets, and a founder-member of the Stuckists art group. Image File history File links Lewis---God-Is-An-Atheist. ...
Image File history File links Lewis---God-Is-An-Atheist. ...
August 1 is the 213th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (214th in leap years), with 152 days remaining. ...
1953 (MCMLIII) is a common year starting on Thursday. ...
The Medway Poets were founded in North Kent in 1979. ...
Stuckism is a British art Movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art. ...
Life and art
Bill Lewis was born in Maidstone, England. His father was a farm worker and shepherd. He attended a secondary modern school and left in 1968 with no qualifications, getting jobs unloading trucks in supermarkets. In 1975 with his friend, Rob Earl, he started what has since grown into a much bigger North Kent Scene, with a series of poetry readings called Outcrowd in a pub by the River Medway in Maidstone. In 1976 he had a breakdown, attempted suicide and spent three months in a psychiatric ward. In 1977 he went to Medway College of Art and Design on a year Foundation Art course, where Billy Childish was also a student. Maidstone (pronounced maid stone) is the county town of Kent, in southeast England, about 30 miles from London. ...
The Kent Institute of Art & Design (KIAD - often pronounced phonetically as ) was an art school based across three campuses in the county of Kent, in the United Kingdom. ...
Billy Childish (real name William Charlie Hamper, or Steven John Hamper) (born December 1, 1959) is an artist, singer, and guitarist, hailing from Chatham in Kent, England. ...
In 1979 joined up with Childish, Charles Thomson, Sexton Ming, Rob Earl and Miriam Carney to found The Medway Poets punk performance group. This was very successful in the region and beyond, performing at the Cambridge International Poetry Festival in 1981 and the subject of a TV South documentary the following year. Charles Thomson (born in Romford, Essex, 1953) is an artist, painter and poet from the United Kingdom. ...
Sexton Ming (born in Gravesend, Kent England in 1961) is a British artist, poet and musician who was a founding member of The Medway Poets (1979) and the Stuckists art group (1999). ...
The Medway Poets were founded in North Kent in 1979. ...
1978-82 he was the CSSD Porter at West Kent General Hospital, which provided subject matter for many of his poems at the time (since 1982 he has concentrated on creative work full-time, occasionally taking temporary jobs such as cleaning floors in Tesco and tomato-picking). He was friends at this time with Tracey Emin and edited her short stories for her first book, Six Turkish Tales (Hangman 1987). Tracey Emin (born 3 July 1963) is an English artist of Turkish Cypriot origin, one of the so-called Young British Artists (YBAs). ...
In 1999 he was one of the founding members of the Stuckist art group along with Childish, Thomson and Ming. This has since grown into an international movement in over 30 countries. Lewis has been featured prominently in all the key Stuckist shows, including the landmark exhibition The Stuckists Punk Victorian held in 2004 at the Walker Art Gallery for the Liverpool Biennial. He has stressed sincerity in art: "People are never sure if we are being ironic or not. We are not. We are coming from the heart."[1] Stuckism is a British art Movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art. ...
The first national gallery exhibition of Stuckist art was at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool from September 18, 2004 - February 20, 2005. ...
This page is about the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. ...
The Liverpool Biennial is the UKs largest international festival of contemporary art. ...
Lewis has published six books of poetry and three of short stories; he has made five reading tours of the US and one of Nicaragua. His writing is included in The Green Man (Viking Press), World Fantasy Award winner, as well as The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (1997)and (1998)[2]. His work was also published in "The Grandchildren of Albion" edited by Michael Horowitz. He was a member of liberation theology School for Prophets founded by the late Fr. Bert White. He was involved in ecological and spiritual campaigns which prompted the American poet, Martin Espada, to call him "the poet of the new paradigm". His writing has been translated into several languages. Most recently his poems were translated into Spanish by the Puerto Rican poet Naomi Ayala and several of his short stories were translated and published in Germany by Connie Losch. He has also been a small press publisher under differing imprints, including the Lazerwolf Press. In 2005 he founded The Medway Delta Press with the aim of publishing some of the best work by North Kent writers, musicians and artists. The first project was a limited edition set of 3 CDs entitled "Voices From The Medway Delta" featuring work by Billy Childish, Sexton Ming, Chris Broderick, Pete Molinari, Bill Lewis, and other key names in the Medway scene. The Medway Delta Press has also published a DVD documentary by Carol Lynn on Stuckism and has plans to publish various books of poems and short stories by writers such as Joe Machine, Sexton Ming and Michael O'Connor.
He describes himself as a self-taught artist, and is obsessive about his work, sometimes repainting an image seventy or eighty times. He describes his painting God Is an Atheist: She Doesn't Believe in Me:
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- The woman represents both my idea of holiness and the feminine part of myself, which is my link to the Great Mystery - that otherness that you sense behind things but you don’t know what it is. I used to call it God, but now that seems a very lame word. In old paintings the dog would have represented fidelity, but it could also be an anagram of God or a trickster figure who illuminates the human shadow (the buried part of us). None of these things are separate: they only appear separate. My paintings are like a magic mirror in fairy stories. I hold it up to try to see my true likeness. Sometimes it takes me years to work out what the symbols mean. That’s why I do them – to try and find out something.
Trivia Bill Lewis googlism
Sources - Ed. Katherine Evans (2000), "The Stuckists" Victoria Press, ISBN 0-907165-27-3
- Ed. Frank Milner (2004), "The Stuckists Punk Victorian" National Museums Liverpool, ISBN 1-902700-27-9
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