BY day, he works at a London museum shop. By night – and whenever he has free time – Billy X is busy painting searing pieces of art that question how society views black men as “lotharios”.

And now the self-taught artist – who beat off competition from more than 100 other classically trained artists – has opened his own show.

X Land landed at the Bomb Factory Art Foundation in Boothby Road, Archway, last Thursday and will run until June 15.

Describing how an obsession with sex and a troubled black masculinity informed his art, Billy Brathwaite said: “I used to think that getting rejected by a girl was like death. That was completely unhealthy. All the messaging to me was like a black man is a sex symbol or a sex object. It doesn’t matter if you see him on TV or he’s a lawyer.

“It doesn’t matter if he’s got into this part of the world or that part of the world; it only just used to feed back to me in this way and if I didn’t come across with this kind of bravado, this ‘grrrr,’ then I wouldn’t be valuable. And it’s taken a while to process that out of myself.”

Calling what he describes as the expectation upon black males to be hyper-sexual as “an elephant in the room,” his paintings feature a range of scenes of people engaging in sexual acts, but with a satirical edge.

The first time Mr Brathwaite picked up a paintbrush – more than 15 years after completing his art GCSE – was around three years ago while making a music video with a friend. Since then, it’s been a slow but empowering journey towards doing something he felt he was born to do.

He said: “The problem is I always thought I was supposed to do something with impact. Yeah, so obviously I could easily just get a job, right? I could get a job nine to five and forget about it. Forget about the creative aspects of myself.

“But then would I be happy? Would I be fulfilled?”

It was a winding path to the Bomb Factory, which runs as a charity that supports hundreds of creatives across five sites in London but the original in Archway was opened in 2015 by artist Pallas Citroen.

While Mr Brathwaite now practises bouts of celibacy and has been sober since February, it was not always like that. A low point for him was waking up last year on a street bench in Angel at midday and having to be hospitalised.

“I wasn’t in a good state and I think really and truly I was depressed,” he said, sunk low by a feeling he was underachieving.

“And the thing is, I wouldn’t have said that I was a big drinker or a big party person, but I had to look at myself, I was 35 at the time.”

Having come out the other end, he wants to analyse society’s obsession with sex. “I do think, you know, sex obsession is ridiculous. It’s ridiculous,” he said. “And that’s why I said like, you know, maybe I’m trying to be provocative. I’m trying to see what’s acceptable.

“But maybe people are committed to their vices or their addiction or whatever, their obsession, and maybe I’m just the weirdo. I’m the guy saying, ‘um, no, I’m not going to have sex. I’m not going to drink’.”

X Land is at the Bomb Factory, Unit 2, 9-15 Boothby Road, N19 4AJ.