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Today’s Works in Progress
Two new Blond Card series started. I said to Tina, last weekend, I’d do a painting of Camden Lock bridge for her daughter. I didn’t have any ideas for it, and it’s not the kind of painting I do had she not asked, so I just started drawing and hoped something would work out. She…
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This video was filmed today at Camden Market in London, where I’ve been doing The Camden Market Free Art Man free art giveaway for about two years now. Original paintings given away en masse to passers by willing to do a one minute interview.
Now I’ve finally decided the days and times I can commit to doing The Camden Market Free Art Man this summer, I need to make signage advertising this. Until November, when I plan to leave the UK for South East Asia for a few months, I’ll be at Camden every Saturday and Sunday 12-3pm, unless rain or sickness stop me. I also need to make some repairs to existing signage and paint some more flags as people are starting to take them.
The trip to South East Asia was initially going to be spent entirely in Thailand with my girlfriend Aon and her family in rural Isaan, but it seems visa conditions will be changing that will only give me 30 days instead of the 60 days it was last year. So the plan now is to spend a month in Thailand, then Aon and I go to Vietnam for a month or two before returning to the UK together.
Recently, I’ve been chopping these Camden videos up into vertical shorts for YouTube. The ones I’ve done so far took too long to make, but I’ve just started learning AI so will hopefully have today’s done a lot quicker. A lot of people took paintings today without doing interviews. I don’t mind as I got nearly an hours worth anyway, and it’s not immediately clear that people are expected to do a YouTube interview, so don’t suspect people are doing anything wrong on purpose. But it means I need a lot more Blond Cards than I currently have in storage. Blond Cards are, by a country mile, the most popular artworks I’ve taken to Camden so far. I’d guess 30-40 went out today. 80 a week, 320 a month, six months till November, around 2000 needed for 2026. If I’d known about Blond Cards last year, I could have made a load last winter in Thailand, but didn’t so spent most of the Thailand time making Heckel’s Horse Jr paintings nobody wants.
I used to edit the Camden videos properly, but now just drag the raw files into my video editor, add the annotations and theme tune, then upload to YouTube without even watching it through. To compensate for this, I’m taking a bit more care to film things in the order they’ll work best in, and making a mental note if something happens that I think will need to be edited out. Making all these time saving changes to my workflow helps but soon gets eaten up by new tasks I didn’t see coming. All the time I save tonight, not video editing is gone working on new Blond Cards. Tomorrow, I’ll be at Billy’s studio meaning 5 hours sat on buses and trains learning AI.
Last year I thought this year will have all the background prep work done, meaning more time painting, making music and doing The Camden Market Free Art Man at least 3 days a week. The prep work was what I thought I was doing in Thailand, but wasn’t. I expect this summer and autumn will be spent figuring out how to do Camden, setting up AI agents, and coming back to the UK in early 2027 with suitcases full of mostly Blond Card paintings. Summer 2027 will hopefully be what I thought summer 2026 was going to be this time last year… FREE ART FREES ART properly moving.
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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 Free Art Man when ready. I’ll be taking a lot more paintings and drawings this size to Camden as it’s currently only my pocket sized work that most people seem to want. Occasionally someone will take a big painting, but they’re too big for most people.
The Camden Market Free Art Man’s getting too Pop Art recently. Some loose oil paintings and music will be added soon and give more space to other Black Ivory work, especially if Emma starts joining in more. The space I used to display at, on the other side of the road’s still available. It would be handy to have two of us there so we could each take a break for something to eat, or take work to the Maddarings stall on Makers Alley that’s currently selling Blond Cards.
The Maddarings shop will soon be just selling Amy Winehouse Blond Cards as it’s right near her statue and I think has only sold a few in the two months they’ve been on sale.
The board of black oil paint is an ephemeral artwork that changes each time it’s used. At least photographing it keeps some kind of permanent record.
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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:
Edgeworth Johnstone 