Heckel’s Horse

Heckel’s Horse is not to be confused with Heckel’s Horse Jr.
Join the campaign to FREE HECKEL’S HORSE from the clutches of the art establishment.

Since 2013 Billy Childish and Edgeworth Johnstone have been making collaborative paintings together at Childish’s studio in Chatham Dockyard ( see Chatham Dockyard Diary). The partnership is called Heckel’s Horse. So far, writing in February 2024, Heckel’s Horse has made around two hundred oil paintings. The vast majority are either 6ft x 5ft or 6ft x 4ft on deep edge linen canvas. Heckel’s Horse has itself collaborated with Harry Adams on a painting, after Mikhail Larionov, called The Turk (below). Heckel’s Horse has been in four group shows: one at Pushkin House (London), one at Sun Pier House (Chatham), one at Fiumano Clase (London) and another in Russia.
In 2014 an art group formed, including Childish and Johnstone, that was also called Heckel’s Horse. This group has nothing to do with the painting partnership between Childish and Johnstone. They just happen to have the same name.
In 2022 Johnstone began a solo project making copies of Heckel’s Horse paintings under the alias Heckel’s Horse Jr.
In 2024 Johnstone spoke about his collaborations with Childish in Haringey Community Press. Later that year, Childish did the same in an interview with Steven Keevil for Kent Local Authority News.

Heckel’s Horse on Wikipedia:

As of March 2024, Heckel’s Horse doesn’t have its own Wikipedia page but is instead found on Billy Childish’s:

“In 2013 Childish began a painting collaboration with Edgeworth Johnstone, later titled Heckel’s Horse.^[11][12] Since 2013, after Charles Thomson (who co-founded Stuckism with Childish in 1999) introduced Childish to Johnstone’s work, Heckel’s Horse have made over 150 oil paintings, mostly on six foot Belgian linen canvases in Childish’s studio at Chatham Dockyard in Kent.^[13][14] In 2024, Childish referred to Heckel’s Horse as his “favourite work”.^[15]“