The Stuckist paints pictures because painting pictures is what matters.
Painting is the medium of self-discovery. It engages the person fully with a process of action, emotion, thought and vision, revealing all of these with intimate and unforgiving breadth and detail.
It is the Stuckist’s duty to explore his/her neurosis and innocence through the making of paintings and displaying them in public, thereby enriching society by giving shared form to individual experience and an individual form to shared experience.
The Stuckist is not mesmerised by the glittering prizes, but is wholeheartedly engaged in the process of painting. Success to the Stuckist is to get out of bed in the morning and paint.
The Stuckist calls for an art that is alive with all aspects of human experience; dares to communicate its ideas in primeval pigment; and possibly experiences itself as not at all clever!
The Stuckist gives up the laborious task of playing games of novelty, shock and gimmick.
The Stuckist neither looks backwards nor forwards but is engaged with the study of the human condition
The Stuckist is opposed to the sterility of the white wall gallery system and calls for exhibitions to be held in homes and musty museums, with access to sofas, tables, chairs and cups of tea.
Stuckism proposes a model of art which is holistic. It is a meeting of the conscious and unconscious, thought and emotion, spiritual and material, private and public.
Painting is mysterious. It creates worlds within worlds, giving access to the unseen psychological realities that we inhabit. The results are radically different from the materials employed.
Stuckism is the quest for authenticity. By removing the mask of cleverness and admitting where we are, the Stuckist allows him/herself uncensored expression.
Stuckism embraces all that it denounces. We only denounce that which stops at the starting point — Stuckism starts at the stopping point!
Artists who don’t paint aren’t artists.
Text taken from the 1st Stuckist Manifesto written by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson 4.8.99
Forest Hill Stuckists 