Not only will people outside of Europe soon be able to buy my artwork from both my online shops, but they’ll also get a free bonus pack of seven original artworks to compensate them for the cost of shipping, tariffs and any other costs. This should all be set up by 18th September 2026. The only condition is that they buy at least £50’s worth of art (excluding shipping) per order. All seven bonus artworks are signed (usually only on the back) on A4 size (29.7 x 21cm) paper, and are 100% handmade originals by me. No reproduction prints. All proper, real artworks. Each bonus artwork is part of a series, which I’ve numbered on the back. Here’s me, showing off pack number 1:

Despite saying in the last post that I would, I didn’t end up going to Billy‘s painting studio on Tuesday because I had too much to do for Camden. It was also raining. There’s a chance I’ll be doing THE CAMDEN MARKET FREE ART MAN this weekend if the weather allows, but it mainly depends on my online shops showing enough signs of life by then. Without the online shops generating decent money, the whole FREE ART FREES ART campaign is no less a facade than a car showroom full of supercars with no engines. What’s needed are some well executed brilliant ideas. Here’s my attempt:

A lot of my best ideas are given to me by @ronthroop Ron Throop during the Black Ivory weekly video podcast, that we broadcast live at 7 pm UK time on Ron‘s Substack. Ron then publishes the recording of each episode on his YouTube. I keep a playlist of these recordings on the front page of the Black Ivory website, should anyone want to learn more about our art and music. One of Ron‘s pieces of advice that I’m currently working on, is to down my painting and music tools for a while and start cataloging and publishing artwork that I’ve made over the last twenty odd years. I’m not sure he suggested this as much as said it was an option, given the floor to ceiling artwork storage he’s witnessed when visiting my house. A lot of my art is collecting dust in various storage rooms, not pulling its financial weight while FREE ART FREES ART goes hungry. This isn’t even including the storage containers worth of Heckel’s Horse collaboration paintings I’ve made with Billy Childish, currently rotting in the sea air on the south coast of England. So much for our Stuckist manifesto pledge, mandated Stuckist duty to enrich society through sharing our work with the public. This willful suppression of our paintings by the commercial artworld is one of the main driving forces behind FREE ART FREES ART, and my insistence that the art establishment many of the Stuckists (including myself) have found themselves embroiled in, is the anti-art world we simultaneously oppose. In theory, at least. FREE ART FREES ART calls time on this intolerable nonsense! Anyway, now’s a good enough time to put Ron‘s advice into action because I have so many wet oil paintings clogging up my studio that making any more will soon make doing anything else physically impossible. Too many wet paintings disrupt the flow. Cash flow, work flow, all things I’m learning more about through watching videos on how self-made billionaires amass their fortunes. Here’s a photo of the Transit Compensation Packs cutting board:

What better to do when you can’t make any more paintings than start organising the ones you’ve already done? The best way to make room for the next batch would be to sell and give them away. I can’t give away my art until I start selling it. This is one hard lesson I’ve learned over the last two years doing FREE ART FREES ART at Camden Market. Again, it comes down to flow. The sale of art pays for the making of art that I give away. Money’s the bottleneck killing the cyclical flow of FREE ART FREES ART. Nothing can move until it’s cleared.

The Transit Compensation Packs were almost called Jompiy Jumbles. No more just selling to Europe. America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand will soon be added. My online sales have been slow since my shops  reopened when I got back from Thailand. I’m sure it’s because I over focused on running The Camden Market Free Art Man every weekend, and some weekdays. This was yet another mistake. I guessed that if I gave my art away to 40 people a day at Camden then a few of those 80 plus a week would go on to spend some money in my online shops. The paintings I give away there are loaded in ADVERTISM with my contacts and links. In defence of my focusing on Camden, there was some urgency to get up and running before the autumn weather kicked in. Camden’s particularly suited to the UK summer, and I’ve at least proved the concept that an artist can stand on the street and exchange plenty of art for video interviews in an environment where there’s 500 other distractions fighting for every passer-by’s attention. It also doesn’t appear to be illegal. The most recent days I’ve done at Camden have been the busiest and most successful I’ve ever done. The videos are great.  So, at least now I know what to do next year to get big interest at Camden Market. Converting their fleeting interest into something more long-term is yet to be figured out, so I’ll need to get back out there fairly soon. 2026 is research and development. 2027 is money and franchise.

Each Transit Compensation Pack is numbered, which will hopefully encourage people to buy early so they get a low edition number. I used to do limited editions but decided they were unethical, snobbery, and pandering to the hideous artworld mindset of exclusivity and of valuing art by other people’s inability to share in it. I despise limited editions and consider its partakers to be little more than vermin. I number my editions but offer no guarantee of how limited each is. Only my lifespan will determine this. Included in each Transit Compensation Pack are seven, signed original artworks. One is an original painting from my Heckel’s Horse Jr. series, the other six are handmade original prints. I came across all these series of works while cataloguing art from my storage room. Always listen to Ron!

I wanted to make the packs available as a stand alone product anyone anywhere could buy, but I’d have to ask a worthwhile price consistent with my other work, which would increase the declared value of any package going outside of Europe, therefore increasing the tariff the customer has to pay. No, I’ll only make them available as a freebie so I can declare their true monetary value (next to nothing) on the customs form. So there are some advantages to making art of virtually no monetary value. Free art truly does free art. On this note, we should end with a monkey carrying a monkey’s head: