Sexton Ming and 'Zappa'. Photo: Graham Turner  That Sexton Ming is only really possible to explain in terms of other artists does not mean he lacks originality. Far from it. The fact that any conversation about him to a non-initiate has to start with a list of more familiar names is simply a recognition that his work is so far out there that you need something to grasp hold of as it drags you in. The simple explanation goes something along the lines that he sounds like Captain Beefheart, writes poetry like Ivor Cutler, draws like David Shrigley and paints like, well, a mixture of all three. You can also throw Vivian Stanshall and Ian Dury into the mix, though these crude comparisons hardly do justice to Ming's individuality.  Ming would be the first to admit that he is a jack of all trades and, technically at least, master of none, having received no training in any of the disciplines that he pursues. There is not a focus group, A&R man or art dealer on the planet who would advise Gravesend-born Ming to carry on ploughing his furrow, which is exactly what makes him such a breath of fresh air. His poems often lack grace and meter, his music is ham-fisted and his paintings are very much those of a man who lacked even the qualifications to get on a foundation course. Yet they still enthral.  This week sees the opening of Ming's first solo gallery show, though he is unsure as to how people will react. It has taken him until the age of 43 to achieve this lone outing, a point by which most career artists would have given up. But Ming is no careerist, having subsisted for years on benefits or the odd sale of a painting.  "The trouble is that I really don't know how much of a name I have got or how much cred I have got," he says. "I might really be surprised and find that people have really caught up. In the 1980s and 1990s people really couldn't see where I was coming from, whereas I think now they have gradually caught up to that."  Ming believes one problem people have with his work is that it contains a lot of humour. His poems and songs are littered with lavatorial gags, and his art is no different. He has even called his solo show Be Crappy after one of his paintings that features a clown defecating into a bucket labelled "art". Some paintings and drawings feature speech bubbles, reminding you just how much like childish cartoons they look, though the humour owes as much to Robert Crumb or Steve Bell as it does to the school playground. There are giant babies, disabled dogs, trees dismembering humans and even Frank Zappa quite literally kicking arse.  "My stuff has got a lot of humour in it," he says. "Humour is not a throwaway thing. It is quite serious because you can get a lot of messages from it. Also, I believe that humour is a great weapon against injustice. But a lot of people think that if it's funny then it is not valid, which I think is wrong. Another thing with speech bubbles is that people don't actually look at art, they talk about it, and so I thought, in that case, maybe the art should talk back to them."  Ming first explored his creative side in the slow learners' class back at school. Like his friend and sometime collaborator Billy Childish, Ming is dyslexic and found that poetry was something that he had a gift for. He met Childish at a poetry reading in 1979 and has since worked with him on half-a-dozen recordings. Ming and Childish were founder members of the Medway Poets as well as being fellow travellers in the Stuckists, the anti-conceptual art movement that both have since left.  With Childish's recent successes and the notoriety of the Stuckists, Ming has found increased recognition, though the same doors are not always open for him. "I did these off-the-wall albums with Billy but because they have got Billy's name on it people will bring it out," he says. "So I record an album and send it off to labels and they say: 'You're a genius Sexton, but it's too weird. The kids won't like it.'"  Ming's recorded output features badly tuned cheap guitars and ditties about everything from dead donkeys that help old ladies with their shopping to the secret life of scarecrows. Like his poems, his songs mix innocent, childish fables with stream of consciousness rants and outrageous sexualisation of popular cartoon characters, often with Ming giggling at his own jokes as he sings. Sadly he has now stopped performing live, as he found he suffered from a kind of reverse stage fright. "If I do a show I am manically depressed for about two weeks [after]," he says. "It is like some kind of coke comedown."  One person who will probably not miss Ming's performances is Ralph Steadman. The cartoonist was more than used to bizarre excess when working with Hunter S Thompson, but he once drew the line at Ming reading poems about Virginia Woolf with his underpants at half mast. "He came up to me and said: 'You're not a poet, you're a failed intellectual'," says Ming.  Ming's status of being on the fringe of fringe culture has led to him setting up his own Rim label to release both his own CDs and work by others shunned by conventional labels. It fuelled the realisation that he was an "outsider", the tag given to artists and musicians who are untrained and unusual, as well as those with a history of mental health problems. As someone who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, has no formal training and a penchant for cross-dressing, Ming has found a label that he is comfortable with.  Sadly, though, just as he seems happy in himself, Ming's first solo show could also be his last hurrah. With his recent marriage to fellow artist Ella Guru (he dressed as the bride and she as the groom) and the birth of their daughter, Ming is finally in need of some kind of commercial success, and sees the show as make or break. He is even training to be a caretaker as a backup plan.  "It would be great if I could make a living out of this, but that is not the motivation," he says. "The creation is the motivation. If something doesn't come out of it all I might pack it in and get a nine-to-five job."  It is only to be hoped that Ming can find a suitable benefactor. It would be a shame to be without such an eccentric talent. And one gets the feeling that he is far better with a brush, pen or guitar than he ever will be with a mop and bucket.  · Be Crappy is at the No Glory Gallery, the Aquarium, 10 Woburn Walk, London WC1 from April 1-30. See sextonming.co.uk for details of Ming's music and poetry.
...but Sexton Ming keeps at it and now, aged 43, he's about to have his first art show. Iain Aitch reports.