I can’t recall when the first “art drop” was, a quick back of an envelope calculation has it easily past 2000 paintings and pieces left, probably more like 3000 over the last dozen years or so, I wasn’t really counting before that. It has been happening since the last century, the art of art dropping.  These days the so called drops are mostly done as one body of work in 43 parts,one piece made up of 43 paintings, the tag on the back reads #43Leaves.

A #43Leaves piece  usually consists of 43 paintings on found unwanted recycled material. Material found on the street, cleaned up, painted on and then left hanging back out there on the street for people to just take should they wish to. A 43 pieced art drop, usually in one place over a day or maybe a week or sometimes a month. There was a 365 piece art drop that lasted the entire length of 2015, there was another 365 day art drop that lasted all the way through 2018, before that there was a hundred piece drop over a weekend one year as part of Hackney WickEd – that might have happened quite a few times at various Hackney WickEd’s. There was another hundred piece drop all over East London one weekend, 100 pieces left hanging up and down Vyner Street, around Brick Lane and Shoreditch. The first art drops I did were probably in the 90’s back when there was a thing called Free Art Thursday (and long before someone claimed to have invented something called Free Art Friday) . There was at one time a lot of art dropping down Vyner Street. In recent times there’s been #43Leaves pieces as part of the Folkestone Triennial Fringe, a couple of #43Leaves pieces as part of Deptford X, there was a #43Leaves piece as part of the Leytonstone Art Trail (actually that’s happened a couple of times as well), there was a #43Leaves piece in a forest in Sussex as part of the Byline Festival one year, there’s been art drops in Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Margate, Shrewsbury, Hastings, there’s been art left hanging on walls in pretty much every part of London, it does mostly happen in London, it is where I’m based. Oh and always on nails, hooks and screws that are already there waiting, no walls are damaged, no one’s art violated, the pieces are mostly gone on the day they’re left…

The important thing is that it must be a painting, a leaf (or whatever you wish to see) on recycled material picked up off the streets, material that’s heading for landfill or the bonfire, it must must must (must) be on material people have thrown away, when we throw things away leaves grow on them. The other important thing is the hashtag on the back (although when I first started doing it there were no hashtags or mobile phones or social media or any of that stuff, the art was just left there unphotographed, so many things went undocumented back there, the other the other important thing is the hashtag on the back so the finders of the pieces become part of the piece, so that finders can tell us where the pieces have gone to or as people like to do, post a photo of them with their found pieces on social media. The photos of the places where the pieces are left and the photos and stories that people tell of the pieces are as important as the paintings themselves, maybe more so. Most of the drops happen in London, however art has travelled far and wide, we know of art that has gone to South America, Japan, the USA, Canada, Wales, Ireland, all over Europe, of pieces hanging in bars in Baltimore, in restaurants in San Francisco, we’ve known them to turn up in galleries (to be on sale in  galleries!), we’ve had some great stories…  

So far in 2022 there’s been a January-long 43 pieced #43Leaves piece around East London, there was a smaller drop in March, only ten pieces but they couldn’t be resisted, ten strange pieces of wooden packaging that demanded to be painted, I use the #43leaves hashtag all the time now – hopefully other people leaving art respect that is mine. There are always one off pieces being left as well, there will be a second 43 pieced #43Leaves piece at the end of May in Bristol as part of this year’s Upfest (where I’ve also been invited to paint)..  The art dropping goes on, the growing and leaving of leaves…  

Do as always, click on an image to enlarge or to run the slide show