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Oil on Hand-cut Paper
Purple Book36 x 27 cm Purple Clothes36 x 26 cm Purple Poet33 x 25 cm Man and Goat Blue24 x 25 cm Man and Goat Peach24 x 24 cm Man and Goat Orange24 x 24 cm Chicken and Biscuit32 x 24 cm Chickens Eating32 x 24 Chicken and Sun33 x 25 cm
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I arrived late to Billy’s painting studio yesterday and he was leaving early for an appointment in town, so only had a few hours to get something done. No time to get my paints out and then 25 minutes tidying up and cleaning brushes, so did some pencil drawings instead. 58 small sketches for my Heckel’s Horse Jr. series. Twelve drawings per A2 size sheet of paper which I folded into eight. Five sheets finished meaning a grand total of 60, with two rejects. I’ll trace them to make A6 size oil transfer drawings from. Here they are:
Oil transfer drawings are original oil paintings, but done with a pencil instead of a brush. You can easily make 30 in a day, which will help get my online shops up to their target listing total of 1000 by March 2027.
When I got home from Billy’s, I continued doing small drawings and ordered a load of small sheets of thick watercolour paper online, as I’ll be needing them for THE CAMDEN MARKET FREE ART MAN display too. There were already some pads of A5 size acid free paper at home, which I’ve started doing oil pastel drawings on. The first nine are finished, photographed and in both my online shops. So much easier when you don’t have to wait for things to dry.
Finally, my shops have works available for under £15, which will hopefully open me up to a lot more people. I’m trying to cover as many price ranges as possible, but have only made it up to £50 so far. There must be money to be made selling original art for over £50, but for now I’m focused on the cheap end as I want to get some quick sales in soon to prove that FREE ART FREES ART is, at least, viable.
The new oil pastel drawings are mostly influenced by Ron Throop @ronthroop paintings, and look quite similar to his. Ron and I have collaborated on mostly large oil paintings under the name JonRon. We both make figurative images from abstract beginnings in our solo work, and these new oil pastel drawings of mine finish before much figuration has happened. A lot like Ron’s. I’ll carry on in this vein and expect the overlap with Ron’s work will get more and more obvious. In a similar way, Emma Pugmire’s linocut prints also remain largely abstract despite being entirely figurative. Emma, Ron and I are the three members of Black Ivory. This abstract figurative theme could make for a worthwhile cohesive exhibition of our group, one day. We could show the world the unique and, as yet, unappreciated common thread running between the Black Ivory artists work. It’s not by random that the three of us came from Stuckism and constitute Black Ivory to the joyful exclusion of everyone else.
The next batch of A5 size artworks will by oil transfer drawings. Oil paint on unprimed paper isn’t recommended as oil rots paper, but most of the oil isn’t transferred onto the paper via a pencil, which also means they’re usually dry in a day or two. I tried this method on primed paper once, but the paint didn’t transfer well anyway. Thin paper’s best for me.
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Tonight’s video is of paintings done in the last couple of days. Oil on canvas, all destined for my online shops. The goal is to have 500 artworks in each of my two shops within six months. Currently, both shops have around 80. 160 down, 840 to go. An average of five paintings a day and replacing ones that sell, should mean being done by March/ April when I plan to visit Thailand for Songkran 2027. My girlfriend Aon, assuming she gets a visa, should be coming here in October. With Aon here I’ll have more time to dedicate to painting and getting them online. Aon’s Thai and currently living in a flat we’re renting in rural Isaan, near her parents. Here’s a photo of how my studio looked earlier today:
My Strawberry Cake bandmate Mooney Ra Ra was round this weekend. She filmed most of the video. Ron Throop’s @ronthroop recently been putting up video tours of his studio, where he paints in the basement of his home in Oswego, near Lake Ontario. Mine’s more like a sales pitch to convert some of THE CAMDEN MARKET FREE ART MAN display visitors into paying customers. Our motto FREE ART FREES ART means often being asked “How do you make money doing this?” The answer since I started doing Camden two years ago is “I don’t.” An answer I hate admitting to, as it means exclusively being for artists rich enough to absorb the financial loss. Effectively, a hobby with some empty words attached that aren’t even true. So, for at least the next few weeks the plan is to make the QR codes on display at Camden lead to sites where visitors spend money. Free art’s only freeing art when it’s netting at least £70 a day. From paintings, hopefully, like this one:
I’m calling this series of videos Black Ivory Studio Snapshot so that it’s not just my videos that qualify for the playlist. Great guy syndrome. It’s a video playlist for all three Black Ivory members. Ron’s been putting up first class studio tours of his, which I’ll add in too. The other Black Ivory member, Emma Pugmire, may have some as well later. There’s around seventeen new paintings in my video, not that I’ve painted that many in two days, they were all half done when I started them. I probably have fifty or so half done oil on canvas paintings waiting to be finished. Finishing these is the quickest and easiest way to get both my shops up to a hundred listings each. Here’s where I sit on my studio floor to paint.
As Moony Ra Ra was filming, we showed the painting I did for her earlier in the week. It’s an acrylic on canvas portrait of her cat, Oreo. A good excuse to plug my new pet portrait artist career. So far, just cats. I was thinking of doing dogs next, but I haven’t found a way of drawing pop art dogs that I like yet. In the meantime I’ll start on horses and tortoises. Here’s Oreo:
Tomorrow, I’m painting at Billy’s studio at Chatham Dockyard, in Kent. I’ve been trying to get into the habit of painting as many oil paintings as I can the day before going to Billy’s, so I can spread them out in my London studio and have them drying while I’m away. Oil painting on stretched canvas, especially, is a nightmare for artists working in a small studio. They take so long to dry and take up so much space until they do. Getting a free day of drying when I’m out of town makes a big difference. The big painting in the photo below is from my Heckel’s Horse Jr. series. I’ll be painting a lot of these, if only because they take so little time to paint. Perfect for getting 840 done by March. The Heckel’s Horse Jr. series are versions of paintings Billy and I have already painted together (under the name Heckel’s Horse) so the composition is already done. My usual method of painting (and I think Ron’s too) is to make abstract marks on the canvas and work something figurative out from there. This takes a while, and by the end of the day can be mentally exhausting. Heckel’s Horse Jr. paintings are so much easier.
Tonight’s video:
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Today wasn’t too bad, missing yet another Saturday at Camden Market to work on the ongoing FREE ART FREES ART cash flow issue as it was raining anyway. Saturday’s usually Camden’s busiest day of the week and subsequently the most painful to miss, but The Camden Market Free Art Man can’t operate at all in the wet. The bridge where I stand has no cover. Passers by don’t want to stop and my water soluble PVA glue covered artworks and signage all get ruined. A couple of months ago I went out in the rain as an experiment and tried setting up under Camden Lock rail bridge, only about 30 yards from where I usually am, but the rail bridge leaks and splash from the road gets everything wet. Now, if there’s any chance of rain I don’t go. So most of today was spent working on my online art shops guilt free. Seems to have had an immediate effect as I sold this painting of a hippo for £15 this evening. It’s just a small one, 7 x 5 inches, oil on canvas:
The main change I made to all the listings was to add the following bio to end of every product description:
About the artist:
I’m a UK artist based in London. My name is Edgeworth Johnstone, but I also work under the aliases Jompiy and Heckel’s Horse Jr. Five of my drawings were exhibited in Tate Modern in 2010, from the collection of The Museum of Everything who own roughly thirty of my artworks. I work every day at home, however on Monday’s I travel to Chatham Dockyard in Kent, where Billy Childish and I make collaborative paintings together under the alias Heckel’s Horse. I make my own versions of these paintings at home under the alias Heckel’s Horse Jr. I have also made large collaborative paintings with Charles Thomson (who co-founded Stuckism with Billy Childish), Black Francis/ Frank Black (the singer in the rock group, Pixies) and Ron Throop (an artist from New York who is also working with me on a project called “Free Art Frees Art”).
Ron Throop is @ronthroop Here are some of the full body cat paintings I finished and uploaded today:
Today also saw another set of Pop Art cat paintings get finished, processed and uploaded to both shops. One is a gift painting to Mooney Ra Ra, my co-musician in the band Strawberry Cake. A 16 x 12 inch portrait of one of her cats, Oreo. The same Oreo who is a misspelled Blond Card character, Orio:
The painting that sold today was to a new customer. As Ron, Emma and I were discussing on this weeks weekly Black Ivory Podcast, all my recent sales have been on Ebay, none on Etsy. Today’s sale was on Ebay too. I don’t know what’s going on with Etsy, I used to do quite well there. Maybe it’s something I’m doing, or not doing, but if I can’t figure it out soon I’ll move all my listings to Ebay. Like they say in the military, always reinforce success. Charles Thomson, founder of Stuckism told me this a long time ago. He told me about a test question the military used during one of the World Wars: You have a group of soldiers to send to one of three battles, to which would you send them?:
Battle 1: Our soldiers are getting beaten and urgently need help to avoid defeat.
Battle 2: Our soldiers are doing okay, but could use some help.
Battle 3: Our soldiers a winning and are expected to be victorious
I think I chose battle 2, as do most, but apparently the correct answer is Battle 3, which is most people’s last choice. Their message being, always reinforce success. If I can keep building sales on Ebay by abandoning my Etsy ghost town, it might get me back to Camden a lot sooner. Either way, FREE ART FREES ART needs to sort out its cash flow, otherwise the whole thing doesn’t work. FREE ART FREES ART must pay for itself for us to be truly independent and confidently kiss goodbye to the galleries for good. Once we have cash flow, we have our own bullet proof art world. Then comes expansion and recruitment, aka Part 3. Recruitment to FREE ART FREES ART won’t be as easy as it was with Stuckism, where all you have to do is announce yourself as the founder of a local Stuckist group that you’ve just invented. FREE ART FREES ART is a relatively hard penniless graft full of rejection, and at times, ridicule. Especially when getting started.
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I’m painting Pop Art cats and starting up as a personalised cat portrait painter. All from thinking more about Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, and how I’d like FREE ART FREES ART to be copying them, especially Keith Haring’s badges. There’s an unused badge making machine in the attic, but it’s all waiting for Part 1 of FREE ART FREE ART to be done:
FREE ART FREES ART Plan, Part 1: Turn up at Camden Market with a street display of my paintings. Anyone can take a painting for free in exchange for a short interview that I publish on YouTube. Get rid of 1-200 paintings a week, 1-3% of painting takers subsequently buy something from one of my online shops. All raising enough money for original art to be made freely available to the local public. Direct to the public, direct from the artist in a face to face exchange. Perfect. No galleries, no middlemen, no commissions, no exclusivity, no art world. FREE ART FREES ART. The YouTube videos and word of mouth take care of PR.
When I started FREE ART FREES ART hardly anyone took a free painting, but continually improving the display has improved things drastically. Most recently, Pop Art style signage, highly visible QR codes everywhere and stuck to everything, and tables with boxes of 12 inch LP format paintings to flick through like in a record store. Now the online shops need the same drastic improving. People aren’t buying yet, so for the last few weeks I’ve shelved almost everything else and built up the online store, slashed prices, and today, started offering personalised Pop Art paintings. It’s still early days, each shop only has 80 or so listings. Until FREE ART FREES ART starts paying for itself, FREE ART FREES NOTHING.
Each online shop will soon have 300 listings each, mostly original paintings on stretched canvas. There’ll be art themed on my band, The Untruth of Heckel’s Horse, the weekly Black Ivory Podcast and super-cheap sketches. Paintings of Ron @ronthroop Emma and I podcasting with the words written across the front, like the AI clips Substack automatically generates would look great at Camden. We were podcasting yesterday to two viewers for over an hour. Here it is:
FREE ART FREES ART Plan, Part 2: Franchise. Once FREE ART FREES ART is working and proven beyond doubt, who needs galleries? The dot com of FREE ART FREES ART will become a cross-promoting global directory of similar practitioners following the same model. A new model distinct from my background being partially Stuckism. Both Stuckism’s founders have influenced my painting. Charles Thomson most clearly in my Pop Art, Billy Childish most clearly in my Expressionism. I crossed paths with both Ron Throop and Emma Pugmire due to Stuckism, the three of us now constitute Black Ivory. The differences between me and Stuckism though are many and vast, and are all being slowly manifested through FREE ART FREES ART. The art world doesn’t need saving. It doesn’t even need acknowledging. It doesn’t matter what colour the walls of a gallery are. Authentic artists don’t need to go on a quest for authenticity. There’s no single artistic medium of self-discovery. I’m a hundred times more interested in novelty, shock and gimmick than in exploring my neurosis, innocence or studying the human condition. I call for exhibitions to be held outside of homes, not in them. For art schools to be abandoned, not filled with locals. FREE ART FREES ART will keep evolving away from Stuckism, I just need to get round to presenting it properly at some point. That’s Part 3.
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These paintings counter ongoing false claims about collaborative art I make with Billy Childish. It isn’t a criticism of Billy. It’s an ALLEGED quote from the book “To Ease My Troubled Mind: The Authorised Unauthorised History of Billy Childish” by Ted Kessler, virtually dismissing 13 years of my work on Heckel’s Horse.
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 Ted Kessler’s book about Billy Childish:
“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.”
I’m the Edgeworth Johnstone that Childish is quoted about. Billy’s a good friend of mine and we get on well, but what he’s quoted as saying about me and my apparent lack of artistic contribution to the collaborative paintings we make together under the name Heckel’s Horse is untrue, uncalled for, derogatory and an insult. I don’t know how accurate, if at all, the quote is. It doesn’t matter, what matters to me is what’s in the book. My proportionate response to this minorest of first world problems is a truck load of paintings contesting it plastered all over the internet and Camden Market. There’ll also be block prints, posters, a full-colour sixteen page booklet and a CD concept album full of songs dedicated to this single issue. The cover of the album will be the big acrylic painting next to me in the video:
The album might take a month or two, but everything else should be ready and dry in three to four weeks max. I’ll hopefully have enough for the first Camden display in two weeks if I have enough acrylic paintings. Acrylic paintings take about a day to dry properly. Oil paintings, even thinly painted ones, can take weeks. Before anyone asks, no I don’t have anything better to do with my time. Credit and legacy have their value, and ultimately, this will all work out for the best once the Camden display’s finished and filmed.
For anyone not familiar with The Camden Market Free Art Man, passers-by are offered a free artwork of their choice in exchange for a one minute video interview for my YouTube channel. The interviews nearly always overrun and the core questions are nearly always the same four. This Camden display, though, has an extra question at the end where I introduce them to the “Celebrity Recognition Scoreboard”. A highly visible display placard where I’ll publicly keep track of how many interviewees have heard of Heckel’s Horse, Billy and me individually to find out who’s most and least famous of the three. Like the vertical scoreboards they have in pub darts, but with three columns. Here’s the extra question:
Had you ever heard of Heckel’s Horse, Billy Childish or The Camden Market Free Art Man before today? – At which point I’ll give them the new booklet, a quick explanation and record their responses on the Celebrity Recognition Scoreboard.
Billy and I have been making these Heckel’s Horse paintings together for the last thirteen years and just painted our most recent one last week. I’ve gone into more detail about all this in other posts and videos, but the new news today is that the series of oil paintings about all this is finally underway. I painted the first two today and plan to paint a further six in the coming week. If any of the ones on 30 x 24 inch stretched canvas sell I’ll probably make some more, but either way there’ll be plenty on paper and cardboard to fill a display at Camden. Come to Camden, hope I’m there and if so, get yourself a free painting!
Before starting the first oil painting today, I glued a pop art version of the same composition next to me as a reference. Similar looking block prints to come. We’re coming in to another heatwave in London. We’re coming into another heatwave in London, part of the reason I wasn’t at Camden today. Saturday is the busiest day. I hate missing Saturday’s but I saw a video on suncream’s and how ineffective a lot of them seemed to be after testing. Even expensive ones. There’s not much shade standing on the bridge all day.
If it’s cooler tomorrow, I’ll take the new acrylic poster to Camden as a warm up for the dedicated “Billy Childish Quoted as Blowing Smoke” day. It’ll be the first themed day at Camden since Nirvana day.
