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 
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.
