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Smoking Cats at Chatham
The third set of oil transfer drawings based on @offgridlife ‘s Free Art Frees Art Claymation Shorts. Made and filmed at the studio I work at on Monday’s at Chatham Dockyard in Kent, UK. I live in Muswell Hill, North London so is a two and half hour trip each way. They’ll be glued to cardboard and taken to The Camden Market…
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If the barrier to entry is money, the poor are screwed. If it’s effort, the lazy are screwed. I’d rather screw the lazy than the poor.
Free Art Frees Art is available to anyone who can be bothered to turn up and get it. You don’t need to be rich. You don’t need to be on an “Approved Buyers” list. You want a painting? It’s yours. Just turn up, take one, do a quick interview and take it home. FREE ART FREES ART is the Contemporary Art revolution. See you at Camden:
Keith Haring was told to stop making his art so accessible, to stop being so prolific. Pure poison. The artworld’s stranglehold on Contemporary Art is dependent on everyone believing that their attempts to make it exclusive to their pre-selected clients has any value or consequence. It’s dependent on artists believing that engaging with galleries, agents and buyers is a game they need to play to put food on the table. It’s essentially dependent on lies.
Free Art Frees Art is why Heckel’s Horse Jr roams free while Heckel’s Horse remains locked in his stable being groomed and prepped for showjumping season, purely for the amusement and financial enrichment of its captors. Heckel’s Horse is a prisoner of Contemporary Art. Heckel’s Horse Jr is Free Art Frees Art.
Ron Throop @ronthroop and I are bringing Free Art Frees Art to New York and London, respectively. In the process we’re also burning our bridges with the conventional art business model. No gallery will touch me now. My art is everywhere in large numbers , meaning a secondary market would kill any attempt to make my artwork worth anything, at least financially. No gallery would work with an artist who’s committed to giving his art away for as long as he’s producing it. Scratch the surface of what the Contemporary Art market is and the practices it finances, and it becomes clear as day that it’s a network that needs taking down. Napster did it so why can’t we? Technology caught up with music, now it’s caught up with art. We have crypto social sites like Blurt, Steemit and Ecency that I don’t think have seen a single percentage of their potential materialise yet. The Camden Market Free Art Man offers clear conscience guilt free art to the masses, and now has the tools to do it:
FREE ART FREES ART will fail if we don’t do it properly. Can artists survive independent of the art world without charging money for their work? Not just giving away quick drawings and cheap prints, but taking the paintings they’ve done at home on to the streets and just giving it all away? Can artists do this AND destroy the Contemporary Art business model? FREE ART FREES ART will see. Check out @offgridlife who’s doing his own version of Free Art Frees Art in Canada. I’m setting up Paypal donation pages, publishing free booklets, Etsy and Ebay shops for those unable to make it to my free art giveaway, crypto-social sites to drum up some cash by blogging. If YouTube picks up, maybe some money will come from there. Who knows? Plenty of mistakes ahead, I’m sure. If you’re interested in what Ron and I are doing, we publish a lot online and do a weekly podcast. See Black Ivory for more info.
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Here’s yesterday’s video from Camden Market. I’ll be doing The Camden Market Free Art Man every Saturday and Sunday until November, when I’ll hopefully be leaving for Thailand to prepare for 2027.
Any weekday’s at Camden will be bonus days if I get time, which I probably won’t as there’s a load of new songs I’d like to get recorded from my Bandcamp this summer.
When I was in Thailand last year I did mostly big expressionist paintings and not enough small pop art ones. We have an apartment in Korat now, where I’ll dedicate less time to getting my retirement there sorted out and more time making pocket sized acrylic Blond Cards. I’ll also try and get all the cardboard cut, painted black and the backs done so that when Aon and I return in February it won’t take so long to get them finished, photographed, processed and uploaded.
Free Art Frees Art is becoming well oiled production line both in London and in New York where @ronthroop Ron Throop is doing similar public displays covered in Advertism. We’re obliterating the traditional art distribution model in much the same way Napster did the music industry. Cull the unnecessary and nefarious middlemen and take it straight to the masses for free. FREE ART FREES ART. Free music freed music, so why wouldn’t free art free art?
Yesterday was the third day of having the crypto social LP’s at Camden. So far, only one has been taken. An Ecency one a lady took because she liked the colour blue. I’ll push these more aggressively in future, as I will the cryptocuReny series. But for now, they’ll just sit alongside the other big paintings that hardly anyone wants, that I lug to Camden on the bus knowing full well I’ll only be lugging back home again. Another series I’ll be taking to Camden soon is Blond Magnums. Larger versions of Blond Cards with less Advertism than normal. I have a lot of small and big work at Camden but not enough medium.
Blond Magnums will be about 40cm by 30cm. Not too big to carry round Camden Market and fit into most tourists carry-on luggage.
The most memorable interviewees from yesterday for me were the lady who’s sung in a band for a year yet struggles to remember its name. Like Emma Pugmire who plays drums in Edgeworth Band. Emma’s been my drummer for over a decade yet still hasn’t memorised a single song. Another lady gave me a drawing in return for a painting, which has only happened once before.
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The heatwave is easing up now, so The Camden Market Free Art Man is back on display.
My new timetable for this year is Saturday and Sundays till November, unless the weather’s bad or I’m sick. Any weekdays will be a bonus, but given how far behind schedule I am, with music in particular, I think it’s unlikely I’ll be doing any more Camden displays during the week before 2027. I’ve started writing new songs again, and still haven’t put Elbow Sisters on my Bandcamp yet. I don’t think 2 out of 3 Rule can go on my Bandcamp because I think I have them signed up to CD Baby for collecting royalties.
Today was the second day of taking my crypto-social LP’s. So far only one’s been taken. An Ecency one because the lady liked the colour blue. I’ll take them again tomorrow and keep working towards a day at Camden dedicated to this series. It may be a long way off, as I’m still heavily dependent on the Blond Cards for getting me a decent number of interviews.
Another new thing is Camden Shorts. After editing each day’s full video, I’m cutting it up into a series of YouTube shorts. Lots of my best interveiws are buried deep in 30+ minute videos that I imagine hardly anyone watches. Hopefully doing shorts will bring them out more.One guy today was especially helpful in distributing my free art to the Arsenal football fans hanging around Camden Lock. I don’t think he managed to get rid of any but took some with him when he left to meet his friend. He’s local so am sure he’ll be back.
I’ll be transferring these designs to Blond Cards soon. New characters for Blurt, Steemit and Ecency:
Back to Camden tomorrow. It’s good to see the locals getting more involved with Free Art Frees Art:
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See the first batch and get general info here. Most will be part of The Camden Market Free Art Man street giveaway, which is itself part of FREE ART FREES ART. Each day I’m at Billy’s studio, I make a set of around twelve oil transfer drawings based on a pencil drawing. I did the pencil drawings a few weeks ago, there’s about ten of them. Once the ten sets are dry, I’ll scan them. By this point there’ll be so many of them, I might make a book out of the scans.
I’m at Billy’s every Monday, so unless I can get some more done at home, this series will take at least a couple of months.
The photo above is the source drawing used to press the oil on to the paper. I use both sides so get mirror images of the original. The transfer drawings will be glued on to cardboard with PVA and Advertism. Unlike my acrylic paintings, I won’t PVA glue over the top as I don’t want a gloss finish on these and PVA on oil in general, although Google says is possible, seems dodgy to me.
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Giving my art away on the streets of Camden Market. I’ll do another video and post specifically about the new series of Blurt, Steemit and Ecency crypto-social artworks I had at The Camden Market Free Art Man today.
12 inch vinyl records primed and hand painted in acrylic, then tied on to Advertism laden cardboard. One interviewee said she was passionate about upcycling. I should have mentioned the cardboard being upcycled from the streets. Mainly the streets of Camden Market in the 6pm-8pm window between local businesses putting their rubbish out and the Camden council bin collectors taking it away. The biggest contributing shop by far is Guitar Guitar, for which they have their own Blond Card. If the shop had a letterbox, they would have received one by now.
I also had a new series of Kozmic Records 12 inch vinyl which John, the owner, saw today when stopping by to chat. I gave him a small Kozmic Records Blond Card for his birthday the other week. It’s currently up in his shop. The Kozmic Records Blond Card is my most popular artwork, apart from the Nirvana ones.
The mother of a Crewe Alexander football player took a Blond Card today. There was a repeat customer from Golders Green, near me, who makes surreal artwork herself. A guy from New York, who I advised look out for @ronthroop Ron Throop doing Free Art Frees Art over there. The lady he was with has a cousin at Oswego University, right near Ron, where Ron’s already done a Free Art Frees Art giveaway. I advised she also look Ron up as he may be back there at some point. Both Ron and @offgridlife had artworks of them taken at Camden today.
There was a law student who does performance art. Alan, the legendary town crier briefly took a Blond Card. As is becoming more and more popular, a French tourist decided to answer the questions in French. A 52 year old dyslexic PhD student gave a moving interview about how art helped her after her son died. The last two interviews happened as I was packing up.
The first was a driving instructor who video interviewed me first for a film he and the lady he was with are making. In the interview I was asked a question about the Highway Code that if I got right, would net me £10 in prize money. I didn’t know the answer and couldn’t say now what the question was. I think it was “At what type of crossing can both a pedestrian and cyclist cross?” Apparently it’s a Toucan Crossing. I’ve never heard of a Toucan Crossing and have held a full driving licence since 1995.
Edgeworth Johnstone 