SLUCKISM & The Lincoln Sluckists
a new movement in art
an Explanation by
Donald Takeshita-Guy
But before I start explaining why I founded Sluckiism I need to tell you a little bit about it’s big big brother – The Stuckists.
Stuckism was born in 1999. Its pround parents were Charles Thomson and Billy Childish. The family grew ang grew until it reached a peak in 2010, when there were over 170 independent Stuckist groups spread across the world.
As the importance of what Stuckism stood for and it had achieved became more widely acknowledged in the main stream art world the number of actual Stuckist groups started to slowly decline.
Billy Childish had left after only 2 years and Charles Thomson took a break from painting in 2024 to concentrate on writing poetry, By then only a handful of artists still referred to themselves as Stuckists and most of the Stuckist groups had faded away.
But, as the founders abandoned their precious baby a new and exciting Stuckist story was starting
Led by Edgworth Johnstone in the Uk and Ron Throop in America, they quickly established themselves as the worthy heirs to this great art movement.
At the same time, I’d discovered Stuckiism myself, and from 2018 to 2025 I’ve curated 16 different Stuckists Exhibitions around the UK.
I’d created the Forest Hill Stuckists in South East London and was thinking of forming a Stuckist group in Lincoln (where I’ve recently moved and opened a small gallery).
But I wanted something unique, my own version of Stuckism with it’s own ethos and manifesto.
So I replaced the “T” with and “L” (for Lincoln) and created Sluckism and the Lincoln Sluckists.
Sluckism is an art movement
Sluckism is a manifesto
Sluckism is a community
Sluckism is a safe space
Sluckism is an experiment
Sluckism is a studio
Sluckism is a an art gallery
Sluckism is an art school
Sluckism is for anyone who wants to be a Sluckist.
The firstSluckistsare Donald and Kathleen and James and Madisson and ByeBye.
The Lincoln SLUCKISTS Manifesto
A Sluckist paints pictures because painting pictures is what matters.
A Sluckist should eliminate, as much as possible, the time span between thinking and doing. The ideal is to think and do at the same second, the same split second.
There are no rules. . . that is how art is born, that is how breakthroughs happen. A Sluckist should go against the rules or break the rules, that is what invention is about.
What a Sluckist should do when you paint is take a brush full of paint, get paint on the picture, and have faith.
A Sluckist does’t wait for inspiration. It comes while they are painting.
A Sluckist tries to say things with color and shapes that you can’t say any other way – things there are no words for.
For a Sluckist learning begins when our comfortable ideas turn out to be inadequate.
A Sluckist learns from experience and makes a backward and forward connection between what we do to things and what we enjoy or suffer from things in consequence.
Failure is instructive. A Sluckist learns quite as much from their failures as from their successes.
Every painting a Sluckist makes becomes a lesson in how to make the next one.
Sluckists make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.
Communication for a Sluckist is a process of sharing experiences till they becomes a common possession. It modifies the disposition of all the parties who partake in it.
For a Sluckist painting creates worlds within worlds, giving access to the unseen psychological realities that we inhabit. The results are radically different from the materials employed.
For a Sluckist painting enenables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
Sluckism 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.
Sluckism is the quest for authenticity. By removing the mask of cleverness and admitting where we are, a Sluckist allows him/herself/themself uncensored expression.
Sluckism embraces all that it denounces. It only denounce that which stops at the starting point — Sluckism starts at the stopping point!
Success for a Sluckist can be simple as getting out of bed in the morning and painting.
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SLUCKISM Manifesto Version 1
01/10/2025
written by Donald Takeshita-Guy
words inspired by and/or stolen from:
Philip Guston
Henry Matisse
Willemm de Kooning
John Dewey
Helen Frankenthaler
Georgia O’Keeffe
Jonathan Kearney
Billy Childish
Charles Thomson
Thomas Merton
Karl Marx