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Billy Childish Quoted as Blowing Smoke – Painting 1
A series of paintings I’m making in response to a quote in the book To Ease My Troubled Mind – the Authorised Unauthorised History of Billy Childish by Ted Kessler. Eventually this series of paintings will be part of a display at The Camden Market Free Art Man dedicated to my response to the following text in…
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Today was the new look Camden Market Free Art Man.
New colour co-ordinated signage, new LP style paintings for people to flick through as if looking for an album in a record store, and my new album Class on CD. The only copies of my album anyone took today were people I gave them to without them asking. For anyone to take one voluntarily I’ll have to attach them to an artwork. Camden’s more known for music than art, and a similar type of music to what I make. Guitar based alternative, punk, it’s taken me two years to get my albums to Camden, way too long. The table makes art that was otherwise on the ground a lot more popular:
A problem with the new signage is that it’s no longer clear enough that you’re supposed to do an interview for a painting, and that they’re not just free to take and then walk off. Quite a few people took a painting today without doing the interview, but as long as it’s just a Blond Card it doesn’t matter. I’ll get some new signage done for next weekend to stop this happening so much.
The LP style painting table today was a trial run, and did pretty well. Next weekend I’ll have at least three tables up with signage on the front of each box. Hopefully it will make the Blond Cards less popular and get some bigger and more powerful Advertism up on people’s walls. I like the idea of people all standing next to each other on the pavement flicking through paintings. Those queuing up for an ice cream on the other side of the road will think I’m giving away records and come over. It was Alan, the town crier’s idea to do the lettering on a yellow background.
The overall display still isn’t getting many people photographing it, far less than stop and photograph Zombie and Alan, but that’ll change when more tables are out and there’s more bright signage asking them all to do the interview. The legs of the tables need something painted on them, but not sure what yet. I’ll need to find somewhere in Camden to store these tables, as it’s all getting too much to carry on the bus as it is. Shelley let me store today’s table at Maddarings, her silver jewellery stall where I get my rings from. Some of my art promotes Maddarings. If she can take the other tables, it just needs to be figured out how to get them to me in the mornings. Another reason to get Aon over here from Thailand to help out.
Aon was going to come this summer, but then the peace talks failed, oil jumped to over $100 again and return tickets from Bangkok to London went from £700 to £1500. 2026 is all preparation anyway. 2025 I did all the wrong work. 2026, I’m learning what art works at Camden and how to mass produce it. 2027, if all goes to plan, will have all the right work done in advance, have both Aon and I in operation in London, and therefore be the first year I expect to make some real progress getting FREE ART FREES ART off the ground.
Once it’s publicly demonstrated that giving your art away on the street is, not only an alternative business model to the traditional gallery one, but a superior one. Other artists will try it and the model can spread. So to get the money rolling in, my online shops have been filling up with more work. Especially scheduling online auctions. If all this can get sorted out this year, 2027 will be all set and ready to go.
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A new song I’ve been working on tonight.
Not doing The Camden Market Free Art Man the last four weeks has given me the chance to catch up on work I’ve been putting off. Subsequently, my online shops are now full of new paintings, a couple even managing to sell. Another thing ticked off my to do list is finishing the paintings contesting the nonsense written about my artwork in the book “To Ease My Troubled Mind: The Authorised Unauthorised History of Billy Childish” by Ted Kessler. Here they are:
Another art project now well underway is the @offgridlife Offgridlife Claymation series of oil transfer drawings. Offgridlife’s fantastic AI claymation videos about FREE ART FREES ART started off this set of, so far, 137 paintings. Most of which are due to be given away at Camden. I expect they’ll be popular and have template drawings done already for the next ones. Here’s the first of the series:
But the main thing I wanted to get done was recording demos for my band Edgeworth Band, although I’m now publishing music by this band under the name The Camden Market Free Art Man as I’ll be giving CD’s away at Camden and want to make it clear that the music’s by me, not just some band I like or am trying to promote. I’m doing Camden tomorrow, so today was the last chance to get started before FREE ART FREES ART starts eating up my time again. It’s been a while since we’ve played any new songs, although I’ve been writing quite consistently. Just not finalising many or recording demos. Tonight, I recorded demos for a song called Plasticine. The video is my favourite of the demos with footage shot during the making, then a reminder to self of how to play it, as I’ll inevitably forget as I start working on other songs, followed by the first demo overlaid with footage I filmed this afternoon of bees pollinating heather. I walked past them on the way to my uncle’s house.
A problem I’ve always had when writing songs is keeping all the parts of each song together in a place I can easily retrieve. Hopefully putting these demo info videos into a YouTube playlist will help solve this. I don’t usually write one song at a time, so revisiting half written songs means trying to remember parts and find old hand-written notes for it. Made even harder by not finishing lyrics and song titles till after the song’s otherwise written, so a lot of the notes for each song don’t have the song title written on. My phone is full of riffs with no useful labelling, so it’s a case of sitting with a guitar and playing each audio file one at a time, looking for bits that relate to the song I’m trying to put together. Such a complicated and arduous process for such simple songs, but 99% of what I write’s useless so it all has to be whittled down. If I can get tomorrow’s Camden video done in time, I’ll try and get another demo done before midnight, when the foxes in our garden start wailing and putting an end to any hopes of recording audio. Emma Pugmire, my drummer’s coming round next Thursday at 5pm to start practicing our next set of songs. Then dinner before we join Ron Throop @ronthroop for another of our weekly Black Ivory Podcast recordings at 7pm UK time. Broadcast live from Ron’s Substack if you fancy tuning in.
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HHJ Home | Etsy | Ebay | Release Heckel’s Horse | Donate
I painted these in acrylic on LP record sleeves then tied them to cardboard with jute string. The cardboard is good quality rescued from the streets of Camden. I painted the cardboard black and glued Advertism around the sides. There’s hanging holes in the top so they are ready to hang. Signed and numbered on the back. These are original paintings, not prints.
These ones are being given away at The Camden Market Free Art Man:
These ones aren’t for sale:
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Oil on stretched canvas. Approx 12 x 9 in/ 30 x 22 cm. In my Ebay and Etsy shops £30 each. Free postage to UK and Europe. Ready to hang so don’t need a frame or any attachments. Signed and titled on the back in pencil. Buying work from my shop help my FREE ART FREES ART campaign to make art freely available to members of the public who do interviews for my CAMDEN MARKET FREE ART MAN display.
Current Ebay auctions:
These ones aren’t for sale:
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I’ve been working on a series of paintings to contest a Billy Childish quote in Ted Kesslers book: To Ease My Troubled Mind The Authorised Unauthorised History of Billy Childish. Billy’s quoted as saying the following in response to the question “When they paint together, is Johnstone like the rhythm section and Childish the frontman?”:
Billy: “No, I’m the guitarist, the singer, the drummer – rhythm is very important in painting. Edgeworth might play a bit of bass on it.”
This isn’t true, and far from the first time my artistic contribution to the collaborative art Billy and I make has been misrepresented to either understate or eradicate my artistic contribution and disproportionately credit work to Billy. The collaboration paintings Billy and I make are done under the name Heckel’s Horse. I make my own versions of these paintings under the name Heckel’s Horse Jr. For my info, see the videos below:
Edgeworth Johnstone 