I Would Be a Whale for Stuckism

Hey Artists, Steemit is Friendly! 2022. Oil on paper, 12 x 16"

What would I do with 25K?
I would buy Steem and become a whale (if possible). I would do this for two reasons.
As an artist, I have long hoped that my labor would be uplifting to the culture, and society would reward a very modest salary in return. I always joke that a part time dishwasher’s income is sufficient for my needs. That ship hasn’t come in. Not yet anyway. My wife Rose is the breadwinner, and we’re both getting on in our years. My new whale job on Steemit would sustain the both of us now that our most expensive needs have been paid for, so to speak. We have a house, garden, self-sufficient adult children, and good friends. Present expenses are mostly for maintenance—food and fuel, and new clothes and entertainment from time to time. Rose could retire 10 years early and work on her photography, and I would paint part time and engage on Steemit to keep paying the bills. I would need to study more to see how this could be successful. I still have much to learn about Steem and how to move it on the exchange market. (In 2022, I tried to cash in on Steem and lost $3000 in seconds.) We only need a little bit to get by. Rose’s photography, my painting and whale-ship would ensure economic homeostasis, and be a great finale to the creative life.
As a whale I would begin a community on Stuckism and invite the many painter friends I have made over the years. Presently, it is difficult to convince them of the many advantages on Steemit. Believe me, I keep trying. Most artists are horrible business people! They’d rather give away their creativity to Zuckerburg than earn some honest Steem on a friendly platform. People are engaged here. I would build a strong community in order to spread the wealth. The 25 grand powered up into Steemit would strengthen my influence significantly. Stuckism is an effective democratic art movement. It fits so well here.
Coincidentally, 2024 is Stuckism’s, and our marriage’s 25th anniversary. I am finishing up a book celebrating Stuckism, and am in the process of final edits. I even mention Steemit:

So all you painters and poets, amateur and professional alike, get on Steemit and make a few bucks. It’s your content, and you should get paid for posting it. At present, Mark Zuckerburg needs us to make himself richer than the Gods. But he isn’t a god. He’s just another child-man playing monopoly with our human concerns. The best way to end a game is to stop playing it.
— Making Friends With Wild Dogs p. 247

I’ll finish with an excerpt from the book (never before seen), and two paintings of Rose. Thanks for the opportunity to participate in World of Xpilar’s “25,000 Subscriber’s Contest”.

“It is the Stuckist’s duty to harness and ride the Internet”
 —  Edgeworth Johnstone

Where is Stuckism headed? Who are the painters to take it there?
We should get to know those invested in Stuckism at the present time, the names backed by action, otherwise there won’t be a 50th anniversary. In 1999 Charles Thomson and Billy Childish, and 11 other founding members started a movement — Ella Guru, Joe Machine, Eamon Everall, Wolf Howard, Philip Absolon, Charles Williams, Sexton Ming, Sanchia Lewis, Bill Lewis, Frances Castle, Sheila Clark.
That’s it. That is their names. Give them praise, money, Dubai auctions, retrospectives, a wiki-frickinpedia, museum walls all over the world — whatever. But if they’re not painting everyday, if Stuckism isn’t the mainstay of their art practice while “putting themselves out there” identifying as Stuckists on the Internet, at home exhibitions, libraries, barrooms and street corners, then cut them off entirely in order to refreshen Stuckism. Maybe that’s what Stuckism needs — a reform movement of the reform movement. Ella Guru and Charles Thomson made a website for Stuckism, long before social media would box central control up and put it away in storage. On the front page it claims to be “an online museum of the first twenty years or so of Stuckism (founded 1999) with occasional updates”, yet it doesn’t reference a single exhibition from the 2010’s, which is crazy, since I alone hosted two international shows, and a few solo exhibitions from renown contemporary Stuckists. Also, I’ve promoted every one of my shows since 2014 on the Stuckist Facebook page. I even put out the manifesto at exhibitions and talk Stuckism up like I’m actually a Stuckist or something.
Crickets on the website. I guess to the official Stuckists at Stuckism Dot Com, the second busiest Stuckist on earth just doesn’t exist.
Furthermore, the structure and design hasn’t been updated in over 20 years. That has some charm, no doubt, but it sure ain’t new, like I need Stuckism to be. Posts are few and far between, and center around successes of old, rather than new painters. It helps early hanger-ons mostly as an avenue to authenticate their work with a movement. Updates center on “chosen” Stuckists — even those who no longer identify as such, nor post on the Stuckist Facebook page, where most of the traffic flows nowadays.
Stuckists need to show. And although the Internet provides a 24/7 opportunity to exhibit, and many do, the digital facsimile is not a “painting in the flesh”, just like the celebrity on TV isn’t the same hero you see in the grocery store — no pimples, halitosis, dandruff. No true beauty and ugliness either, which is best discovered in person. Flat 2-D digital representation of 3-D art (painting) has less personality and is always wanting for “realness”. It downright lies as well, and gets away with it. I recently visited an online poetry magazine to read verse by Robert Okaji (see Forward). There was an untitled “painting” to match his poem, “Cyclops Dreams”. I looked at it with envy, as I often do when confronted with, what appears at first blush to be genius. I say to myself, “Oh well, here is another accomplished, confident master, the like of whom I will never be”. At the bottom of the page is a bio for the art maker who “uses collage, digital painting and AI manipulation to drag surrealism kicking and screaming into the 21st century where it belongs.”
A lie. A big one in art and repeated a million times daily. This guy is no painter. Just another interior decorator set at the computer with a cup of coffee. At his public exhibit he hangs the framed print under glass. Nothing to see here that you couldn’t tear out of a magazine. He could make it super high resolution and digitize it on an LED billboard, or sky banner it over the Super Bowl during halftime. It’s certainly a thing completed, a skill practiced, perhaps even a high craft or a work of art, why not? But this dude is no artist, and this is where I’m taking the future of Stuckism, with or without its name. I want to redefine and act upon what it means to be a painter with ideas.
I will no longer deny my passion. I must break from the old labels. I’m not stuck. I am a wonder of evolution, metamorphosis and flux. You can’t catch me. You can’t even try. My ideas are reshaping society. They will crap my pants and lift you to heaven. A humble mortal nearing death while painting, always one up on the down below.
Lately, I have been suggesting a name change for Stuckism. I don’t want it to become the punk Church of England. I’m an American Separatist, a dissenter by nature. But I’m no Puritan — I could take or leave painting altogether on a philosophical whim. There are times when I feel the label “Stuckist” a barrier to my art, when what I truly want is to be born again with or without painting. I don’t blame the name more than the Stuckist “AINO’s” (Artists in Name Only) who inconsistently attach their work to it, whenever it suits them, or start off innocent with Stuckism then land a couple high gallery contracts and bye-bye humility. Several living progenitors aren’t living Stuckism anymore. I say move aside if they’re not gonna have home shows or post work on the Facebook page. What we need is camaraderie, positivity, helpful groupthink, not another sell out. There are enough painterly dogs eating dogs in the art world. You can’t be a Stuckist with an agent who isn’t a Stuckist.
Take a look at the Stuckist Facebook page. Link to any lonely painter’s Instagram or website that gets visited as often as a nursing home to see who is eagerly planning, participating and promoting painting exhibitions for the joy of it. I say those are your Stuckists. There are only a few that can be recognized among every thousand painters. The rest appear as non-communal sufferers in the cult of commodity/individuality. So 20th century! So death-like and arrogant. Making monuments for the acid rain to chip at until extinction. Boring and old and dead, like the moon we see every night, ad nauseam.
Furthermore, the Stuckist movement has become stale like dry wafers at the 1st communion of a religion that has morphed ironically into non-communal self (dis)satisfaction. Let this be a warning to the next generation of painters who want to identify as Stuckist. Know when to break away and take the best parts of the old ways. Then practice until the next revolt.
Meanwhile, dear Stuckism, I will also call you “Artcrazyoldmanism” because I don’t want to die painting like a sad follower of a defunct religion. I want to teach myself the art of painting without expectation of reward. I want to believe that I don’t want glittering prizes. I need to get out of bed every morning and paint, until I can’t.

1/3 of the Reason I Don’t Run Amok 2016. Acrylic on wood, 24 x 24"

Rose Running Before I Caught Her 2024. Acrylic on loose canvas, 20 x 23"