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Heckel’s Horse Saved by Stuckism
2026 has been a bad year for Heckel’s Horse, but things are looking up for 2027. Billy Childish and I started the Heckel’s Horse painting COLLABORATION (YES!!! Don’t believe the rubbish Billy’s quoted to have said in the recent Billy Childish biography by Ted Kessler, Heckel’s Horse is a collaboration of substantial and essential artistic…
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These are £15 on my Etsy & Ebay. Oil paint on A2 size paper. The paper is 170 gsm thick. Approx 60 x 42 cm / 23 x 16 inches. I did the writing in 6B pencil. I painted the painted text through a stencil I designed and cut by hand. The paper is cockled and curls at the edges.
About archival long-term effects: As the paper is unprimed, the oil paint will react with the paper over the years and cause yellowing and decay to the paper. I don’t know if the paper is acid free or not, but if it is, this will also cause yellowing over the years.
Signed on the front and back.
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This morning was spent photographing and uploading Jonron paintings to my website. Jonron is a painting collaboration between @ronthroop Ron Throop and myself. Living in different countries means we don’t make as many as we’d like. Ron lives in the US, I live in the UK. There are some other Jonron’s in the house somewhere. Possibly buried underneath a load of plaster that recently collapsed from the ceiling in my storage room.
I’ve also been tinkering with both my website and The Black Ivory Podcast one. There’s a new page for Mooney Ra Ra’s art, but so far just has her bus window condensation drawings on.
Flight prices out to Thailand have shot up now, and Aon says there’s loads of farang about in Pattaya. I’m also feeling a seasonal change, re-doing my website so that it’s more focussed on my collaborative work than my solo. The fuller my online shops get the better they represent my solo work, so I might as well make my website, primarily, about the work I do with others. Especially Black Ivory. But I also found an old page dedicated to the FREE HECKEL’S HORSE FROM THE CLUTCHES OF THE ART ESTABLISHMENT that I’ll be using material from for my forthcoming speech at Speaker’s Corner.
The collaboration drawings I made with bar girls working in Pattaya’s red light district are also now linked to my site’s front page. It was then that I met Aon, who did some drawings with me and then started getting other local bar girls she knew to come up to my hotel room to make more drawings. This made life a lot easier, as I didn’t have to waste time and money in bars asking them myself. Aon and I are planning on heading straight to Pattaya for a couple of weeks when I land in Bangkok. It’ll be good to get some more of these collaboration drawings done while we’re there. Here’s Aon and I drawing in my room on Soi 7:
Another collaboration page is for the, one and counting, painting Black Francis and I have made together. He travels through the UK quite a lot, usually on tour with his band The Pixies. On one of his visits we went to Billy’s studio in Chatham where he did half a painting on some cardboard I gave him. Then about a year later I finished it. After visiting Billy’s, he and I got an Uber back into London, where he gave me some of the best advice I’ve ever had. We were talking about playing in bands, and that since Shelley (my ex-wife and Elbow Sisters bandmate) and I had broken up, I hadn’t done much since, musically. He suggested I start doing my own thing. I said that I couldn’t because I can’t sing. As soon as I said this, I realised that I was taking the easy anti-Stuckist way out and that he was about to remind me of my STUCKIST DUTY to not fear failure. He didn’t put it in exactly those words, but said these exact words instead “Singing’s overrated.” As soon as I heard this, I was free as a bird. Permission to sing badly from the world’s best singer. Consider it done!!!! We met up earlier this year, in London again, where I belatedly thanked him for this advice. I get the impression he had no recollection of giving it. Nevertheless, it’s therefore directly thanks to Black Francis that Emma and I have our band. Here’s the Black Francis half of our colaboration, in situ with its creator:
There are other collaborations on the site to write about, but I need to make dinner now. This post will have to be a two parter.
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These are £25 each in my Etsy & Ebay.
Signed original self-portraits painting by me, Edgeworth Johnstone (aka “Heckel’s Horse Jr.” & “The Camden Market Free Art Man”). It’s NOT a print.
I painted it on a sheet of thick A2 size paper (approx 42 x 59 cm / 16.5 x 23.5 inches. 170gsm thickness). I signed this painting on the back in pencil. I’ve painted multiple versions of this painting and numbered each. I applied the black oil paint, not with a brush, but by laying the paper face down on a board of oil paint, then drawing on the back of the paper in pencil. I painted the orange acrylic paint on afterwards with a paint brush. Will be sent to you well packaged and recorded delivery. Postage is free if you are in the UK.
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Before moving on to the forthcoming and HISTORIC first Heckel’s Horse solo show coming to London in 2027 that only took 13 years to arrive… BLACK IVORY are doing a WEEKLY FREE ORIGINAL ARTWORK giveaway on the, also weekly, Black Ivory Podcast!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Only live viewers of our podcast can enter. Both alive and live. Anyone taking part stands a very good chance of winning, as one live viewer will win, and we rarely get more than three live viewers on any broadcast. So if you like our work and want a free one, further details are given in tonight’s episode HERE. Unfortunately only viewers from the UK, USA and Canada are eligible as anywhere else is too expensive and/ or too complicated to post to. All the photos in this post are from TONIGHT’S EPISODE OF THE BLACK IVORY PODCAST. We broadcast live every Thursday at 7pm UK time on both Ron Throop’s Substack and my Substack. Emma, Ron @ronthroop and I usually talk for a little over an hour and try to reply to viewers’ comments as they appear on screen.
A still from tonight’s weekly BLACK IVORY PODCAST. Not having access to any of the HECKEL’S HORSE paintings gives the plans for my forthcoming HECKEL’S HORSE exhibition an interesting angle. The exhibition will be of the shameful lack of access the public have to HECKEL’S HORSE. Where most would expect HECKEL’S HORSE paintings to hang in a HECKEL’S HORSE exhibition will be exhibits that leave visitors wondering “If only more people would read and understand the STUCKIST MANIFESTO, we’d be looking at HECKEL’S HORSE paintings right now. Not these feeble substitutes Edgeworth’s pathetically rustled up. Where did it all go wrong?” I’ll tell you where it all went wrong. It all went wrong when everything the STUCKIST MANIFESTO hates turned up, got comfy and refused to leave for 13 years.
Will someone hurry up and do their f**king Stuckist duty! Pompously pushing and prodding HECKEL’S HORSE like a purposeless pawn playing perpetual political art chess is doubly shameful for me, as Charles Thomson appointed me DIRECTOR OF STUCKISM. Recent events have finally pulled the wool from over my eyes. Despite not even voting in the EU referendum, I’ve been rightly instructed by friends not to continue supporting people who create barriers for political gain, in what was a clear reference to my Tony Benn-esque views on the EU which these days, are considered far-right. Consider it done. My quantum subatomic support of Brexit ends here. I hope that’s a load off for everyone. L-13’s welcome public castigation of me on my Instagram seemed quite…
“The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.” – Oscar Wilde.
…but still led me to consider the, far greater, support I’m giving the Commercial Art world by refusing to do my STUCKIST DUTY in sharing HECKEL’S HORSE with the wider public. Surely these barriers HECKEL’S HORSE faces, created for political gain, must therefore come crashing down too. In 2027, right after I’m back from Thailand, the first solo HECKEL’S HORSE exhibition will be held at BLACK IVORY in London, and will include absolutely no HECKEL’S HORSE art.
Ron the gardener. You won’t believe why Ron’s showing us a clove of garlic. Find out on tonight’s Black Ivory Podcast!
As Charles Thomson and Billy Childish valiantly wrote in the Stuckist manifesto, IT’S THE STUCKIST’S DUTY to share our work with the public, “thereby enriching society by giving shared form to individual experience and an individual form to shared experience.” Not locked up in storage containers for years on end, waiting for some art-suit to decide it’s safe enough to let the public see and experience the perfect synergy that is HECKEL’S HORSE, no doubt within the sterile anti-Stuckism confines of a reputable Commercial Art gallery. As always, I keep coming back to what my mum always said…
“If you want something done, do it yourself.”
You’d think an artist like me, who calls himself an amateur, would have realised this a long time ago. My Strawberry Cake bandmate Mooney Ra Ra is 11 years old and knows how it’s done. We bought a phone case for her online weeks ago that never arrived, so tonight, she designed and made her own. She used scrap cardboard, glue, paper, painted it pink, and now, not only does she have a phone case, but it’s a hundred times better than any precision ergonomic waterproof, drop proof, whatever proof snazzy one we could have spent a fortune on with some big online retailer. Likewise, we’ll now finally get a HECKEL’S HORSE exhibition that, even without HECKEL’S HORSE paintings, cigars, nibbles or champagne, will be a hundred times better than any overpriced and officially validated Commercial Art world alternative. BLACK IVORY are amateurs, we leave all that to the professionals.
Lesson time on The Black Ivory Podcast.
