{"id":102142,"date":"2026-03-14T13:51:26","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T20:51:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=102142"},"modified":"2026-03-25T08:31:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T15:31:13","slug":"delayed-gratification-ben-childress-and-the-slow-reward-of-painting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/delayed-gratification-ben-childress-and-the-slow-reward-of-painting\/","title":{"rendered":"Delayed Gratification: Ben Childress and the Slow Reward of Painting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/h4>\n

Artists often enter school with raw talent and leave with newly sharpened skills, expected to begin careers\u2014sometimes before they\u2019ve lived long enough to know what they want to say. That possibility nagged at Ben Childress<\/a>. After a year at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, he stepped away. \u201cI felt like I didn\u2019t have much to say yet,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI wanted to live life a little first.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Living life turned out to be no easy apprenticeship. Much of Childress\u2019 twenties were spent drifting between Portland and Salt Lake City, working a string of jobs that rarely lasted long. At one point he found himself hauling pianos around Portland with a boss who, he says, \u201cwanted to teach me how to fight.\u201d Another job had him in the blending room at the Tazo Tea factory, mixing batches of loose tea that would eventually be sealed into tea bags. \u201cIt got everywhere,\u201d he says. \u201cIn your ears, in your nose\u2014you\u2019re swallowing it all day.\u201d There were stretches when the drinking overtook everything else. \u201cI had friends who would buy me a handle of whiskey every week,\u201d he says. \u201cI was just going through it.\u201d Eventually he was caught drinking on the job while moving pianos. He describes the end of that job as \u201ca mutual dissolution of the relationship.\u201d Other jobs followed\u2014courier work, valet shifts, whatever came along. \u201cI think I was unhappy for a long time after I left school,\u201d he says. \u201cI always had this feeling like\u2014what am I doing here?\u201d<\/h4>\n

Art never disappeared entirely. Childress had drawn obsessively as a kid and continued to sketch when he could, eventually turning to painting. The medium, he says, offers something drawing never quite did. \u201cPainting makes me feel worse while I\u2019m doing it,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m constantly questioning my abilities and why I\u2019m doing anything in life\u2014especially this. But when it\u2019s finished it\u2019s incredibly satisfying.\u201d<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After more than a decade of drifting between Portland and Utah, Childress finally settled back in Salt Lake City. In his thirties he returned to school, finishing the degree he had abandoned years earlier at the University of Utah. By then he was older than many of his classmates and far more focused. One of his professors kept pressing him about the work he was making. \u201cHe just kept asking me, \u2018Why are you doing this?\u2019\u201d Childress recalls. \u201cAt first I thought it was just because it looked cool. But the more I thought about it, I realized it was probably me dealing with the aftermath. I don\u2019t process emotions that well.\u201d<\/h4>\n

During those years of drifting and uncertainty, one steady presence remained in his life: his father, who transitioned when Childress was young and later lived as a woman. Despite her own struggles, she remained firmly in his corner. \u201cMy dad was always encouraging me to keep doing art,\u201d he says. \u201cEven when I wasn\u2019t sure it made sense.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Her death a few years ago forced a reckoning. Without the quiet safety net that had existed for so long, Childress found himself confronting the question he had postponed for years. \u201cAfter my dad passed away, it kind of hit me,\u201d he says. \u201cThis is the only thing I\u2019m good at. I\u2019ve had like twenty different jobs. This is the only thing that really brings me any sort of fulfillment or happiness.\u201d His father\u2019s passing also left a small if temporary financial cushion. For the first time, he committed himself to painting full-time. Now, nearing forty, Childress works out of Poor Yorick Studios in South Salt Lake, where canvases spill into the hallways.<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the months following his father\u2019s death, Childress found himself wandering the streets around Salt Lake City’s Ninth & Ninth neighborhood, where he had spent time growing up and skateboarding with friends. He began walking through the narrow service corridors behind the houses, photographing the spaces that most people pass without noticing. Around the same time, an old photograph resurfaced on his phone: a snapshot taken years earlier during a light installation at the Gateway, where colored lights cast ghostly shadows of people against a wall. The image had seemed interesting at the time but had sat forgotten for years. Seeing it again sparked an idea. Childress began combining the shadow figures with photographs of alleyways in digital collages before translating the images into paintings.<\/h4>\n

The result is a body of work that feels both ordinary and slightly unsettling. In many of the paintings, the alleyways themselves are rendered in muted or monochromatic tones\u2014greens, blues, or grays that flatten the space and evoke the feel of a faded photograph. Moving through these corridors are vivid silhouettes: figures formed from layered colored shadows, receding into the distance. \u201cI love the image of figures just going off into the distance,\u201d Childress says. \u201cThere\u2019s something about the unknown in that.\u201d<\/h4>\n

“The work is really about identity and place,\u201d he says, \u201cand how those two things come together to make who we are.\u201d The alleyways themselves carry traces of older neighborhoods. Built as service corridors for early twentieth-century homes, they remain largely overlooked today\u2014functional spaces that exist just out of view of the carefully composed fronts of neighborhoods. For Childress, that quality is part of their appeal. \u201cAn alleyway is a space that\u2019s always there but kind of ignored,\u201d he says. \u201cBut if you really look at it, there\u2019s a lot going on in those places.\u201d<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/h4>\n

Childress has spoken about his tendency to repress emotions rather than confront them directly. Seen in that light, the shadow figures drifting through Salt Lake City\u2019s alleyways begin to feel less like anonymous passersby and more like fragments of memory\u2014presences that linger just at the edge of recognition.<\/h4>\n

His first opportunity to show the work in a substantial way came with a solo exhibition at the Salt Lake City Public Library in December and January. For Childress, the venue carried its own history. As a kid he had spent hours there flipping through art books and wandering through the gallery spaces, imagining the lives of the artists whose work hung there. To return years later as one of those artists felt like a quiet full-circle moment.<\/h4>\n

The opening brought together old friends, family members, and curious visitors passing through the library. The response was encouraging. But the emotional arc of a show doesn\u2019t end with the opening. A friend warned him about a side of exhibiting many artists know well: the postpartum slump that can follow months of preparation. \u201cYou work so hard to get to this one thing,\u201d Childress says. \u201cAnd then you do it and it\u2019s over. It\u2019s like, okay\u2026 now what?\u201d<\/h4>\n

Fortunately, he didn\u2019t have long to linger in that feeling. Finch Lane Gallery had already scheduled another exhibition, which meant new deadlines and new canvases waiting in the studio. Within days he was back at Poor Yorick, pushing the shadow imagery further\u2014experimenting with monochrome alleyways, isolating the shadow figures, and exploring how the images might evolve into new environments and memories.<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Today, the studio reflects that ongoing experimentation. One wall holds the familiar alleyway scenes, while on an easel sits something entirely different: a floral painting in progress, its bright colors pushing against the surface of the canvas. Childress says he\u2019s working on it for his mother\u2014an art lover with her own tastes and interests\u2014who, he jokes, might prefer something like this to the darker alleyway paintings that could disturb the balance of her walls. He moves easily between subjects, switching gears when the alleyways begin to feel too familiar. At the studio door, Miss Milton, his Great Dane, keeps watch, occasionally lifting her head when someone passes down the hallway outside.<\/h4>\n

For years Childress chased quicker forms of escape\u2014drinking, drugs, anything that promised immediate relief. Painting has offered something different. \u201cDrugs make you feel good in the moment,\u201d he says. \u201cPainting makes you feel worse first and better later.\u201d He\u2019s learning to live with that slower reward. \u201cI\u2019m okay with delayed gratification,\u201d he says. After a couple of decades finding his way back to the studio, he just might find it.<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Benjamin Childress:\u00a0Shadows and Alleyways, <\/em>Finch Lane Gallery<\/a>, Salt Lake City, through Apr. 10. Gallery Stroll Reception: Fri., Mar 20, 6-9pm: Salt Lake Gallery Stroll.<\/p>\n

All images courtesy of the author.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Artists often enter school with raw talent and leave with newly sharpened skills, expected to begin careers\u2014sometimes before they\u2019ve lived long enough to know what they want to say. That possibility nagged at Ben Childress. After a year at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,14],"tags":[4850,96],"class_list":["post-102142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artist_profiles","category-visual_arts","tag-ben-childress","tag-finch-lane-gallery"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/ben-childress.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 06:04:31","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102142"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102206,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102142\/revisions\/102206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}