Black Ivory 6.18.26

I hit the “Go Live” button! Check it out. Lots of conceptual art:

• Ron does the clapping song that wows the grandkids.
• Edgeworth likes Ron’s recent paintings.
• Emma went to an exhibition on Sunday at Highgate Gallery.
• She viewed work by Christopher Johnson, a “professional” painter’s portraits and landscapes. He charges 10 grand for some of his paijntings. She drank wine.
• Tom Wesselmann is the American painter Ron never heard of.
• Rice and fish for dinner, with rosemary, peas and carrots.
• Edgeworth has a new series titles “Maddarings”.
• He left the @offgridlife templates at home on his Monday trip to Billy’s.
• 5 hour roundtrip to Chatham.
• Monday was mostly a thinking day for Edgeworth and Ron talks about Einstein at Princeton, with all the other brains, thinking in a room.
• Edgeworth does his thinking in the first half hour of waking.
• Ron gets excited about the next day without amphetamines.
• Edgeworth makes lists.
• Ron used to make lists. Now he’s just focused on painting, and then see what happens.
• Edgeworth asks Ron about his recent plan to cut out the Internet for the summer. Ron says basically that he has changed his mind.
• Emma says we must limit our screen time.
• The UK has a new ban on social media for 16 year olds. Emma and Edgeworth are dubious.
• Edgeworth has given up on the government. Just get to Thailand says he.
• “The people deserve the government they have.”
• Ron thinks we live in Republics, and not very competent ones at that.
• Charles returned paintings to Emma. Greece paintings. Very good.
• Compared to Christopher Johnson’s work, Emma wins.
• Travel bubbles.
• A large percentage of Americans don’t have a passport. Not so in England. Nearly everyone has one.
• Edgeworth is having lower views on YouTube.
• He has YouTube Shorts scheduled every day until October.
• Lupo Sol Instagram non-exponential growth.
• Emma’s views too are stuck, stuck, stuck!
• Edgeworth says we’ll get more popular online the more we’re offline. We agree.
• The incredible Slart story. You must listen to hear the coincidence.
• JonThoms are coming down the pike, but there are 12 other things Edgeworth needs to do.
• Edgeworth has ideas on the backlog that Ron could only dream of.
• And just forget Emma and Edgeworth recording a new album! Not this year.
• They could do open mics in Oswego night after night.
• Edgeworth Band has never been paid for their gigs.
• Ron has not performed a live set of original songs.
• Emma talks about the open mics at the Strawberry Festival. This is a perfect segue to what Ron was going to ask her about the Strawberry Festival whose coverage got lost last week. The Flying Pig Stage! A mini-Glastonbury!
• Ron and Rose are going to a music festival this summer.
• Speaking of last week, Ron asks Edgeworth about the badge-maker. They’re on his to-do list.
• Edgeworth wants to get traffic to Maddarings and Kosmic Records while he’s in Camden.
• The problem with Camden is that after Edgeworth leaves, there’s no residual evidence that he’s been there.
• Edgeworth is going to make badges with original paintings and Advertism.
• Ron mentions Discord. He made the site “Free Art Frees Art” in order to draw more traffic. He wants to create a community on Blurt. Just another way to bring people in. Edgeworth gives Ron the green light.
• Edgeworth doesn’t want to make it a community just to show art. There are already plenty of those. Only people who are giving away their art should be allowed to post. Ron agrees.
• We’ll be specifically EXCLUSIVE.
• Edgeworth says you have to have a common denominator that’s unique.
• “Show us original art you gave away for free.” Any kind of art. People who shun the art world to do Free Art Frees Art. Sculptors, manga artists…
• Emma thinks Stuckism and street art is like Free Art because everyone can look at it. Stuckism is indoor street art. Street art and and Stuckism are a reaction to conceptual art.
• Ron recalls a time when he gave a presentation of Stuckism and an audience member said that aren’t all Stuckists just non-famous painters with an axe to grind? Emma is nonplussed.
• Edgeworth thinks the reality of Stuckist art opposed to the theory is that it’s so disconnected to itself.
• Ron thinks Free Art Frees Art is a good tributary off Stuckism.
• Edgeworth disagrees.
• Emma talks about Tracey Emin and conceptual art. She’s made the money and now back to painting.
• “There’s Stuckist photographers” says Edgeworth which leads to his (and my) opinion that…
• Stuckism has lost its identity. It franchised itself without quality control. No unique selling point.
• It became so inclusive that there is no identity any longer. It’s homogenized. Why not take 100 random artists off Instagram and call them Stuckists?
• Emma says another thing about Stuckism is that it utilized the Internet at its infancy. It taught humanity that it doesn’t need the gallery system. Ron agrees with this. Sure, Stuckists weren’t the only people putting their pictures online, but it also suggested to painters to take out the middleman, host their own shows, etc… An art reformation.
• David Bowie quote to make oneself a bit more uncomfortable each day.
• “The best artists will make art if you cut their arms off”—Edgeworth Johnstone
• People who need a safety net should be “culled”, not wasted.
• Edgeworth suggests we cut all funding to the arts. Ron disagrees to a point, but still appreciates his buffer (Rose). Edgeworth is sure Ron would make art come what may.
• Edgeworth picked Ron and Emma out of Stuckism because they were the real deal:)
• Ron talks about painting in the woods by the light of a kerosene lamp without a single soul knowing what he was up to.
• Edgeworth asks Ron if he has much of a record of his early painting days.
• Emma talks about Tracey Emin and photos of her early paintings. When Emma was at art college everything was conceptual art. Students were encouraged to visit the Turner Prize. She was smitten by the Stuckist Manifesto.
• Edgeworth was attracted to Stuckism because he realized there were people like him.
• Ron shows a painting he’ll paint over. He has many. He doesn’t want to die with bad paintings in the studio.
• Edgeworth doesn’t want to die with other people’s paintings in his studio.
• Today, Black Ivory is conceptual. The talking is the art now.
• Emma and Edgeworth make a conceptual art piece, “The Impossibility of Life in the Mind of Something Dead”.
• Schrodinger’s Shark
• Ron has an obsession with painting oils on paper. 20,000 by death!
• Ron is in process of massive clean up of his studio.
• No more big paintings!
• Black Francis wanted to have a show of big paintings!
• Both Throop and Troop rhyme with loop. Duh!
• Ron thinks big paintings were popular for galleries to push. And in the old days, rich merchants and Popes commissioned big works to decorate their homes.
• Edgeworth says people always give him bad advice about art.
• Wrong and opposite.
• Edgeworth asks Ron where he is on Free Art Frees Art and Ron skirts the question with by talk about pricing his booklet to hand out.
• Edgeworth is not getting the feedback from his booklet he had hoped for.
• Ron tells Edgeworth that he’s building a powerful brand.
• Edgeworth tells a marketing story about boots. It’s all about the image.
• Edgeworth is in the right place, and his time will come.
• Edgeworth needs the next stage for Free Art Frees Art to take off.
• Ron reads the last page from his book to explain Rose’s professional marketing approach.
• There is a lag time in a good marketing campaign.
• Edgeworth and Emma disagree of the timelessness of the Stuckist movement.
• Ron’s next book will be on Free Art Frees Art. He wants to get to London.
• Edgeworth was thinking “Puny”.
• The Advertism is essential. QRs and urls are on 80 artworks ready to hang that Edgeworth gave away at Camden last week.
• Every Advertism painting is an exhibition.
• Advertism is passive attention
• Father’s day in England and the U.S.A.