Lake Ontario Paintings and Free Art Frees Art Should Not Make Us Slaves to a Concept

Lake Ontario Spirit Animal Digests Fake Leader Alive 2026. Oil on paper, 18 x 24"

Lake of the Dead Billionaires 2026. Oil on paper, 18 x 24"

Last Night Swim of the Summer on Lake Ontario 2026. Oil and pastel on paper, 18 x 24"

Big, Beautiful Lake Ontario! 2026. Oil and pastel on paper, 18 x 24"

Slow Day on Lake Ontario 2026. Oil and pastel on paper, 18 x 24"

Happy Accident on Lake Ontario 2026. Oil and pastel on paper, 18 x 24"

If you’re willing to hang it, it’s free. But I’m not your creator slave. I’m not even a good Samaritan. If you don’t mind some Advertism painted, markered or pasted on the front, then I get something lasting for my effort. Links to my website will pay me back for the many months, maybe years, that my painting advertises to your social circle. But I’m not even doing that lately. Although just a signature should be enough to spark conversation that could lead to a future coin toss into my wishing well. Your non-fungible token by Ron Throop hangs intimately in the vestibule. Everyone sees it. I win, you win. Free Art Frees Art means that we get a return on our investment.
Or do we? You got a painting, (you’re welcome)and I got an email, subscriber, follower, or dare say, future purchaser of my work.
Oops! That’s just not been the case. I see that someone is not holding up their end of the bargain. You didn’t do any of those things. Maybe you didn’t even give me a video interview. Well, that part’s on me. I am too timid with business, and even more of a coward with anti-business.
Unfortunately, I think I am the nail in the coffin of my own Free Art Frees Art.
Last month I had a visitor to the studio. She came for a free painting and brought me a bag of groceries. Cheese, chocolate, assorted teas... She got it! She’s one in a hundred who do. Then this morning I woke up to yet another query for my free art from an institution (always a “non-profit) requesting a donation of my art for its’ fundraiser. How disheartening! Asking those with the least to offer their labor and creativity so potential donors (who can afford it) get a trinket to take home. It’s never good enough for the richies to just give their tax-free donation for a good cause, but they have to get their little present too. I said sure, but offered the caveat, “Always can use some oil paints if they’re piling up in a box. Titanium white is most welcome”. The administrator won’t know what to do with that request. How dare the empty-pocket painter ask the million dollar art center for paint to continue giving away free paintings to it.
There is the angle where Free Art Frees Art might just mean that I am a desperate sucker.

Should this scheme which I am now broaching prove a failure I will go on making water colors. I will paint my own grave and lie in it., and though my eyes be closed forever I shall enjoy every aspect of my demise, despite the lack of perspective, the lack of form, the lack of this and that. I will have a colorful end, perhaps not in the style of Paul Klee and John Marin (who is still alive, praise God!), but an end, my own end, the only end that anyone should aspire to.
—Henry Miller, March 14, 1943, from a letter in The Plight of the Creative Artist in the United States of America

And then the following as postscript:

Any one wishing to encourage the water color mania would do well to send me paper, brushes and tubes, of which I am always in need. I would also be grateful for old clothes, shirts, socks, etc. I am 5 ft. 8 in. tall, weigh 150 pounds, 15½ neck. 38 chest, 32 waist, hat and shoes both size 7 to 7½. Love corduroys.