It was a Monday, and Billy Childish, perched atop a ladder in front of a large linen canvas, was brushing yellow onto his latest painting.

Mondays are painting days for Childish, 64, who parks his green Saab outside his studio on the naval dockyards of Chatham, his hometown in Kent, about 30 miles from London.

Otherwise, he might be writing a novel, drafting poetry or recording music: Part of a prolific, confessional churn of albums and art that have established Childish as a cult producer. As a singer and guitarist for Thee Headcoats and other groups, Childish in the 1990s was considered a garage rock savant.

His antics as an artist and writer — being expelled from the prestigious Saint Martin’s School of Art, writing the first manifestoes of the Stuckism movement and staging protests outside Tate Modern — have imbued him with an anti-establishment aura. Then, there was a turbulent, artistically revelatory romantic relationship with Tracey Emin, the confessional British artist who has called Childish an early influence.

Childish (whose real name is Steven Hamper) has since disassociated from Stuckism, which promoted figurative painting and opposed conceptual art. He has persisted with the paintbrush, creating surreal landscapes and confronting portraits that have, in recent years, appeared in galleries across Seoul, New York and London that once might have overlooked him. (He attributed that attention to his longtime supporters' having made their way into influential positions.)