Let’s get something straight: splashing paint on a canvas does not make you Jackson Pollock. It doesn’t even make you interesting. And yet here we are, with Ed Sheeran earnestly unveiling his Cosmic Carpark Paintings – a series of “Pollock-inspired” abstract works made with household paint in a Soho garage, now being sold for up to £2,000 a pop.
The twist? People are buying it. Both Sheeran’s and a host of celebrity artists are doing nicely from their hobby.
Because Ed Sheeran, the guy who wrote Thinking Out Loud, has decided he’s a visual artist now. Because fame, apparently, is transferable currency: it buys you gallery space, collectors, and credibility – even when the work itself says nothing.
Let’s talk about Pollock. Jackson Pollock didn’t just invent drip painting on a whim. His technique was revolutionary not because it looked messy, but because it redefined what painting was. He wasn’t painting a picture, he was performing a gesture. The canvas became a stage, and the act of painting itself was the artwork. This was action painting: the movement, the physicality, the urgency – that was the point. The image left behind was merely the evidence, the residue of an encounter. In the post-war 1940s, this wasn’t decoration – it was a radical assertion of being. Of chaos, control, surrender, and defiance. His work wasn’t pretty, it was profound.
Now fast-forward to Ed Sheeran, flinging paint around in a car park with a GoPro strapped to his chest. Not to interrogate the medium. Not to explore presence, violence, rhythm, or form. But because it looked fun. The comparison isn’t just lazy – it’s offensive.
Sheeran himself admits he paints when he’s “not working on a record” and that it “makes me feel great.” And that’s fine. Paint your feelings. Doodle between tours. Call it therapy! But don’t confuse it with art.
Because real artists don’t make work just to let off steam. They build practices—sustained, often obsessive, lines of inquiry that evolve, deepen, and demand something in return. Art, for them, isn’t a soothing side project. It’s an inevitability. A compulsion. Something that requires patience, study, discipline, and failure. You don’t just “do” art like you “do” yoga.
Art is hard. It’s rarely cute. It’s not something you pick up on your off-days and put down when the next album drops. And just because you’re famous doesn’t mean your curiosity is critical, or your output meaningful.
This isn’t about gatekeeping. This is about standards.
And Ed isn’t alone. There’s a growing trend of famous people moonlighting as artists, often with the same vague, Abstract expressionist aesthetic. And why do they all choose the same aesthetic? Well, dear reader, in my opinion it’s because it looks easy and no one cared to pick up an art history book to understand why it matters and why what they’re about to do shouldn’t – no offence, Ed.
Bob Dylan, whose music shaped generations, has also become a prolific painter. Quiet colours, Americana scenes – incredibly boring – hard to tell whether we’re meant to see them as art or merch. Dylan is more contemplative than Sheeran, but still, you get the sense that the work is collected not because of its artistic value, but because it’s Dylan.
Then there’s Johnny Depp. Remember when he started selling portraits of Hunter S. Thompson and Heath Ledger? They looked like Warholian NFTs. And they sold out in hours. Not because of composition, colour, or subject. Because it’s Captain Jack Sparrow with a paintbrush.
At a time when emerging artists are drowning under the weight of unpaid rent, gatekept opportunities, and Instagram’s algorithm, celebrity artists and their work are a spectacle with guaranteed press. And the art world – hungry for headlines, collectors, and capital – feeds it.
It’s worth asking: what does it say about us, as a culture, that a famous person’s hobby can get a solo show before a working artist with years of practice and intent?
Maybe we’ve lost sight of what art is supposed to do. It’s not just decoration. It’s not just therapy. And it’s definitely not just something you can do because you’re bored between brand deals.
Call it fun. Call it expressive. Call it whatever you want.
But if you’re calling it art, it better have something to say.
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