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Lone Kayaker
Unlike last Monday, I remembered today to take my template drawing for the next set of Offgridlife Claymation paintings. Last week I forgot, so started the Add Maddarings series promoting Shelley’s shop at Camden Market. Today’s Offgridlife inspired image is called Lone Kayaker, the hand stamped red letter titles for which have already been printed. Oil paint on A4…
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Made a quick start this morning. Four paintings given away before the display was fully set up, including the main sign which was the first to go. None of my new range of Free Art Frees Art A4 size paintings went, but two flag paintings did, which I was on the verge of giving up on. None had gone until today, then two people took one within a minute of each other.
Two paintings of @offgridlife were taken today, furthering The Camden Market Free Art Man promotion of the crypto-social sites I’ve recently joined. Today made three days in a row at Camden. I’m exhausted as it’s ment early mornings and late nights getting the artwork done. Next week is forecast for hot weather so not likely to get much rest for a while, but this was what I was supposed to preparing for during last winter in Thailand. Had I done more small paintings in Thailand, I would be much better prepared. But this is my first full-on year doing FREE ART FREES ART so am using more for learning lessons that anything else. This winter the plan is to live poor in Korat for a few months and make thousands of Blond Cards. If I can get most of the cardboard cut, painted and the backs half-finished, 2027 should be pretty much Camden every day. Also between now and then, I’d like three things sorted out in particular:- Free storage space at Camden Market so I don’t have to lug the display and artwork there and back every day on the bus.
- Make artwork on the bridge between interviews.
- Somewhere I can put the display up when it’s raining.
NEWS JUST IN!!!! Mooney Ra Ra, my co Strawberry Cake has just told me that the man who took the Orio Blond Card was her friend’s dad, that he was on his way to the birthday party they were all at together, and the Oreo cat we were talking about on the video, that we thought were two different cats, is the same cat! Mooney Ra Ra’s cat! Here’s some photos from today:
Above: She’s photographing Zombie.
Above: Donated pop art.
Above: Today’s display. I have to wait till around 2pm to take these photos, when the sun is at the correct angle. In the mornings, the display is covered in the trees shadows.
Above: Blond Cards are the future.
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Too many Camden days have been rained off this year, so I went out this morning even though a downpour was forecast. Saturday’s are usually the busiest for The Camden Market Free Art Man and the plan for 2026 is to become part of the Camden Market furniture, like Alan the town crier and Zombie the punk. Alan told me last week that I’ve become established there already, but I don’t feel it yet. I’ve been skipping too many days, and it’s all been because of the weather. Last year, the weather in London was so much better. Even in late March, when our plane landed from Thailand, Aon and I were walking our luggage home at 9pm in shorts and T-shirt. It hardly rained that spring, which helped as @ronthroop visited and we did a FREE ART FREES ART day in Camden. Ron’s success that afternoon, especially relative to mine, led to a complete revamp of my display and change in location. Ron’s Camden display was the most consequential art event of 2025 for me, and for the FREE ART FREES ART movement.
In an effort to find a rain covered location at Camden, I did a trial run yesterday of setting up under Camden Lock bridge. It’s too leaky, too many people crowd under it when the rain starts, the ground gets wet and seeps into the artwork, there’s not enough room to show my bigger paintings, the work still gets wet on the journey to and from the bus stop and there’s little visibility of my display because the pavement’s so narrow. Apart from that, it’s perfect. Didn’t need it today though, as the forecast was wrong again, and it stayed dry but windy all day. Here are some photos:
Above: the full Camden Market Free Art Man display.
Above: My shadow overlooking a potential customer.
Above: I like the look of the signage as you walk down from Camden Town tube station, with the Camden Lock painted bridge in the background.
Above: How can anyone walk past such an offer?
Above: Anarchy for Art and Heckel’s Horse Jr paintings.
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My response to a quote in the book To Ease My Troubled Mind – the authorised unauthorised history of Billy Childish that I stress I haven’t read. A friend of mine has, and phoned me last night to let me know what’s been written and quoted about the Heckel’s Horse paintings Billy and I make together. I wasn’t interviewed for this book, despite having been working in Billy’s painting studio on a weekly basis since 2013 (apart from a year off during covid) and collaborating with Billy on 150-200 paintings that hardly anyone’s seen, under the name Heckel’s Horse. Billy’s a good friend, has been amazingly helpful to me and my art and is an honest man I trust and respect. But this quote is nonsense, and has to be publicly contested. I don’t know how this quote came about, but it can’t just sit like this on record, given the lack of publication about Heckel’s Horse that currently exists. I work extremely hard on my art and music and have dedicated a large part of it to this series of paintings Billy and I have been collaborating on. I’m also a self-representing artist, so don’t have any big clout gallery representing me and my work. Publishing misleading, at the very least, information about my art and work I do with others is something I have to stand up to. Heckel’s Horse is a collaboration between myself, Edgeworth Johnstone, and Billy Childish that we’ve been working on for the past thirteen years. The quote I’m referring to in the Ted Kessler biography of Billy is:
“When they paint together, is Johnstone like the rhythm section and Childish the frontman? ‘No, I’m the guitarist, the singer, the drummer – rhythm is very important in painting. Edgeworth might play a bit of bass on it.’”
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12 inch vinyl LP’s, double primed, painted in acrylic and 7M Posca Pen. Tied to thick cardboard rescued from the streets of Camden and Muswell Hill.. Writing in Black Sharpie permanent marker. Red letters individually hand stamped with Rubine and Napthol red Caligo oil based printing inks. Hand cut Advertism. Numbered on the back. Holes poked in the middle with a soldering iron. Threaded with garden twine.
The making of…
Edgeworth Johnstone 