The first copy of the CLASS Deluxe Edition to be sold was posted off to its new owner in America today. Included in the pack are two small original acrylic paintings on card, a signed and numbered FREE ART FREES ART manifesto and the CD itself in a cardboard sleeve. As a last minute addition, I put in a bonus drawing from a new series of drawings called CLASS SONG LIST. All the songs on the album written in block capital outlines, written over each other to make an abstract pattern. A lot like some of the AESPHONLY series I did during covid lockdown.
Another order was going out to the US today. Someone bought two oil paintings, so I did two quick oil pastel drawings on paper to put in with them. Drawings of the paintings they had just bought. FREE ART FREES ART says don’t think twice about giving away something you can make another of in ten minutes.
One of my band’s videos has been getting more views than usual. Nearly up to a thousand. BLACK IVORY VIRAL. Black Ivory is the art group both members of my band are in, along with @ronthroop Ron Throop. One viewer commented something along the lines of “If the Green Party were a band.” Might be our first review of 2026. The song’s a new one going on the album I’m currently recording demos for. I finished writing a song called Shade yesterday, and was planning on recording one called Plasticine today, but my friend Charles came round and we ended up talking for several hours. Following on from a four hour phone call we had the other day. Charles founded an art group called STUCKISM with his friend Billy, who I’m painting with tomorrow. BLACK IVORY and its affiliates are a tight-knit bunch. Who needs inspiration when you have BLACK IVORY discipline? but these long chats inspired some late night recording sessions where a few new songs got written. The BLACK IVORY PODCAST works in much the same way, a list of four or five almost forgotten about tasks being pushed up the list. Perspective renewed on whatever I’m in the middle of doing. Knowing we have to talk for an hour about our work every Thursday is reason enough to get something done. Here’s the video:
As I’m writing this, the painting below just found a new home. There’s over a hundred of this size painting sitting half done in my studio. Small 7 x 5 inch oil on canvases. Selling multiple paintings every day for next to nothing feels so much more natural than a handful of blockbuster sales each year through an agent or gallery. FREE ART FREES ART is still happening despite THE CAMDEN MARKET FREE ART MAN being sidelined, in the form of surprise free extra ORIGINAL artworks and literature going in each parcel.
Key to FREE ART FREES ART is the insistence that the artworks concerned are handmade originals. Someone messaged me once claiming to be part of a group that also distributes their art for free. I looked at their site, and they’re doing nothing of the sort. They’re leaving computer printouts of their artworks around their local area. That’s not free art, it’s littering. Original paintings are pieces of confetti to the true FREE ART FREES ARTER. An ADVERTISM’d painting’s an Argos catalogue. On the back of the CLASS album is the FREE ART FREES ART manifesto. Point 2: “The masses have what the elite want.” The elite don’t want flyers. Flyers are for the likes or us, not them. The elite get the real deal in ELITE WORLD. Well, not anymore BUSTER!!!! Point 18: “The pin is mightier than the bubble.”
