Add Maddarings Beginnings
A new series of hands needing rings, specifically, Maddarings.
Maddarings is the shop at Camden Market I get all my rings from. I've only just started wearing rings. Cheap ones costing £5-£25 each. No money in the world could buy better ones. I've filled all my fingers and don't think I'll do thumbs or any other kind of jewellery. 8 fingers holding between two and four rings each. I'd guess a total spend of around £150.
Maddarings is on Makers Alley near Cyberdog and the Amy Winehouse statue. You walk through the Stables Market entrance on Chalk Farm Road, turn right up the cobbled path then straight ahead on your right to 620 Makers Alley. Each artwork comes with a map showing how to get there. I did 15 of the paintings at Billy's and the pencil drawn maps at home.
They still need gluing to cardboard, that I'll paint black like the Jompiy G's and Blond Cards. An earlier series I give out at The Camden Market Free Art Man promotes Kozmic Records, a record fair near Camden Lock bridge where I set up my display every weekend. There's Blond Cards promoting Camden venues such as The Elephants Head and The Black Cap. None of these places asked me to do them, and like everything The Camden Market Free Art Man, no money changes hands. There's also a series of acrylic paintings themed on Maddarings that were available to buy at the shop, but none sold. I think we were asking £5 a painting. Roughly the same the Camden Market ice cream van charges if you choose against the extra chocolate flake. Camden go-ers pay top dollar for taste, touch, sound and smell stimulation, but not sight.
It's noticeably less busy online recently. YouTube views for my Camden videos are significantly down, as is engagement on other platforms. Not sure why, probably something I'm doing wrong, but I'll figure it out eventually. I've been spending an extra few hours a week making and posting YouTube shorts. Maybe that'll help. I eventually got round to doing Camden TikTok's last week. In a few years I'll probably get started on AI.
The Add Maddarings were started at Billy's studio on Monday as I forgot to take the drawing I'd prepared for the Offgridlife Claymation series. A series I've been working on every Monday for the last three weeks after @offgridlife YouTube shorts about FREE ART FREES ART. I had to quickly come up with something to do, and for some reason came up with this.
Shelley, who runs Maddarings, was the singer in Elbow Sisters. A two-piece band we did when we were married for a few years, starting in 2009. I think we started the band after getting married.
The first set of oil transfer drawings I made using this method were after The Rite of Spring. Billy and I then collaborated on a series of using this method that, unfortunately, were attributed solely to him. Welcome to the art world! Pristine on the outside, dodgy second-hand car dealers behind the scenes. I was quite put out by this deliberate misattribution, as I moaned about extensively in a recent video addressing another case of my artistic contributions with Billy being understating/ eradicating of my role in order to falsely elevate his. None of this is Billy's fault, as far as I'm concerned, it seems to be how others have chosen to attribute our work irrespective of the truth. FREE ART FREES ART is the antithesis of this, as is Black Ivory. If there's no credible art world available, make one. Or as my mum would say "If you want something done, do it yourself."
The red and green text above were all individually hand stamped this morning. They'll go on the front somewhere with the painting and map. Despite being in oil, even the thickly painted Add Maddarings dry in only a few days. The pencil drawings of the map are traced from my initial sketch showing where Maddarings is in relation to Cyberdog and the Amy Winehouse statue.
