A Crude and Desperate Blending of Stuckism and Protest

Old Dog, New Fleas 2024. Acrylic on loose canvas, 20 x 23"

Hi Ecency and the Hive machine,

We’re almost caught up with my ongoing project to get poor while the U.S. partakes in genocide. This is my eighth week of the project. Then onward to London:

I was coming close to exceeding my allowance of expenses for the week. We were low on food for hosting the Friday night Stuckist mini-exhibition/happy hour, so I took a mid-week bus trip to the grocery store. Cabbage soup without potatoes wasn’t going to cut it. And what a lame happy hour without a cake for guests, and at least one tall beer to drink. That little trip cost me plenty ($15.30), and I walked home in the rain instead of taking the bus back, just to save a buck.

I spent $30 on an application to a juried art exhibition at the local art center, and $42 on a 6 yard canvas blanket that I cut up to make paintings like this:

Colored Victims of Genocide 2024. Acrylic on loose canvas, 18 x 23"

After the happy hour, I would need a ride across town to another painting exhibition ($10.25). Even that would keep me in safe territory. However, the next day Rose and I made plans to drive to Utica to visit my stepmother, who we haven’t seen in a while ($18.50). Dammit! I was over the week’s limit. A financial failure again, even at poverty.

Then during happy hour, a genuine need (for me) was met. A friend paid $50 cash for one of the paintings that hung at a previous dining room exhibition. Hurrah! A credit that kept me poor enough to flip off the genocide enablers for another week. $267.02 spent on living large in a national hell. High spending, but still below poverty level. So far I have enjoyed 8 weeks of healthy, creative living for the low, low cost of $1,765.24. Thank you special friend for pushing that fifty in my direction. A toast to you! And then toast for me, for breakfast and lunch, because I’m gonna double down this week and keep expenses below $200.

In my opinion, this is also Stuckism par excellence. Stuckists agree that painting is a path to self-discovery. I did my due diligence and hung two weeks worth of work on the wall. The trade of painting for dollars was symbolic. It helped justify the path. But it’s just one man’s way among a million other routes to freedom. Stuckism helps painters and would-be artists, but I believe that personal liberation practice of any type can bear fruit. Though one thing I’m sure about: Any practice will not thrive on excess comfort, which does not mean one has to suffer. Just don’t overdo it. Driving to the store when I want a bag of chips is overdoing it. Craving a dinner that wants limes in the recipe when there are no limes in the house is over doing it. Boil the pantry rice instead, for life’s sake! Then go sit in a corner and breathe. There is a middle way that is the artist’s way. The artist of life’s way. That’s what humans could practice if they want to help earth spirits clean up the garbage-leavings of specie-ism. I am a work in progress, just a poorer hypocrite monk. My blessings unto you along with these crude and desperate paintings that will breakdown to future microplastics stored in tuna fish fat, unless you buy now and preserve them for centuries as family heirlooms.

Fake Alien Reaction When Asked If It Wants to Stay 2024. Acrylic on loose canvas, 20 x 23"

From the Stuckist Manifesto, precept #15:

The ego-artist’s constant striving for public recognition results in a constant fear of failure. The Stuckist risks failure wilfully and mindfully by daring to transmute his/her ideas through the realms of painting. Whereas the ego-artist’s fear of failure inevitably brings about an underlying self-loathing, the failures that the Stuckist encounters engage him/her in a deepening process which leads to the understanding of the futility of all striving. The Stuckist doesn’t strive — which is to avoid who and where you are — the Stuckist engages with the moment.

A couple friends at happy hour questioned the title for my next exhibition which will showcase 100 of these loose canvas paintings. Although I’m in a show of two, I hope to call my part, “Crude and Desperate: Recent Paintings by Ron Throop”. They suggested that I change it to some title more kindly. Do I really want to advertise my art to be “crude and desperate?” A power of suggestion that might retard any climb onto a higher level of art society. All artists use at least some measure of self-deprecation, but maybe this goes a bit too far?

Well, no actually. It goes just far enough. I make crude and desperate paintings. I don’t make art any more than Sarah rakes the leaves on her lawn, humming peaceful tunes, releasing ntric oxide to improve her sex life. Or Tom boils, no—gently simmers baby red potatoes to the point of perfect doneness and evaporation, with fine olive oil, fresh tarragon, salt and pepper tossed in. If you need to find something more beautiful that what is in front of you every second, every hour, then that is your mind disease, not mine. And there will be warehouses full of pretty pictures to hang on the wall. Just take your pick. After happy hour, Rose and I went to a local painter’s opening at the Art Association. She makes beautiful paintings. Really beautiful paintings. She makes art, though perhaps she might not be an artist. “I paint therefore I am an artist” is no more true than if a child said so. The deepening is the important part, (See Stuckist manifesto precept #15), and she will come to her own, private conclusions about it. We all do at some point.

I paint my emotions and ideas. I paint them crudely onto canvas woven in sweatshops, imported from Chinese capitalism. I do it to practice adding, what I always hope to be, an equal part of the life that I take away. But I know whatever I do (especially painting) is no good for the pine tree, squirrel, or my grandchildren. I long to do nothing every moment to make so many bad things happening now just stop. Impossible. I chop wood. I carry water. I climb into sardine cans of jet propulsion and fly off to London. We cannot unstick ourselves from the infected web we’ve spun. But I have to keep trying.

And failing.

I paint pictures and get poor biding my time. I call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Want to join me? Rise a dough and go for a walk.

Nothing Fits Here 2024. Acrylic on loose canvas, 20 x 23"

P.S. And about that ongoing genocide perpetuated by my government of Charlie Mansons…

The times they are a changin’, quickly. As a 50-something, I have lived through several significant evolutionary stages of technological art. Born unto 4 channels of broadcast television and a library card with my name typed askew over the line, I am going to finish this post paraphrasing words from a meme I saw on social media:

My friend once said, “There are times when you should speak, not because you’re going to change people’s minds, but because if you don’t speak, they’ve already changed yours.”

Good luck to all of us and our kids!

Ron the Stuckist

Sold! Almost Not a Cynic Not 2024. Acrylic on loose canvas, 20 x 23"