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.
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.
