The Kaiser Edition

If you look on the right hand side, there underneath the picture of the Mountain Rescue Painting you find a list of people who’ve helped to raise the value of the painting. If you’ve helped, and you’re not on the list let me know. Keep your eye on it, it should grow and grow and grow. Here’s who has helped out so far:

Andrew Hovells

Dan Germain

Drew McLellan

Faris Yakob

Gavin Heaton

Graeme Douglas

John Grant

Paul Colman

Planning Liberation Front

Rob Campbell

Russell Davies

thibault_thibault

Woweewow

Click here to find out how you can help raise the value of the painting.

[If you do link here, after reading this, please leave a little note in the comment section so that I can update. Thank you.]

As I mentioned before, Jackson Pollock hogs the only computer we’ve got over here and this means that I don’t get to post very often. But this doesn’t mean up not up to stuff like meeting interesting ghosts and things. So, here are a few things you can expect to see over the next couple of days.

• I will be meeting God over the weekend, Sunday in fact. She’ll be popping into our garret for a quick chat and has agreed to answer any questions you may have. So put your thinking caps on and post a question in the comments section.
• The BBC is amazing and managed to get a satellite link to “our side of the fence” and I had a rather nice chat to someone from BBC Radio 5. There will be an update on Monday about this.
• I will be announcing details of how we intend to sell the painting next week. It’s a little bit complex, but should work and there are things that you can do now to help our cause (if you’ve not been here before we’re trying to raise money for charity and you should maybe read this).I can tell you this much; the Mountain Rescue Painting (based on the model I’ll present next week) is currently valued at $78, which is obviously not enough. You can increase its value by linking to this blog. You can either write a post about The Dead Artist (you may use any of the artwork, videos or texts and posting the painting itself would be just brilliant), or simply put a link in your blog roll. Lot’s of links means lots of cash for Mountain Rescue and that’s the point of what we’re doing. And why I’m dead. Please make the darkness worth while.

So remember, questions for God (and be polite she’s a lady) and links.

P.S. Does anyone have any good press contacts? If you do can you either contact them or send me an email at theotherside [at] brown-mpm [dot] de and I’ll get in touch. Thanks!

UPDATE: We’ve got a cool magazine over here, called “Dead Ringer”, and look who’s hit the cover! (Vincent Van Gogh is really, really jealous about this. Ha!)

Being dead has some advantages, like having rather a lot of time on your hands to think about stuff. I was just thinking about how all this stuff with the mountain rescue painting started and found the following post in the bottom of my suitcase.

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I’m having a little holiday. It’s nice being at home; drinking tea, doing the washing (darling I’ve got the machine on – I’m doing whites) and thinking about stuff. It’s Eva’s birthday tomorrow and we may go to Lake Garde in Italy which is about 4 hours away in the car.

Anyway.

Thinking about stuff is always good. And in between cups of tea I remembered that I used to be an artist. Like, a proper one, with a gallerist and exhibitions and stuff. It’s a while ago now since I stopped doing all that, and I stopped because I had children to feed and I got bored of the people. Bizarrely I ended up in advertising – make of that what you will. Last year, when I had some time on my hands, I started painting again just for fun and to keep my eye in. Tidying up the living room I found one of the paintings behind the sofa and I thought I’d share some of my stuff with you lot.

Of all the things I’ve posted, this one scare me a little. They are quite personal little paintings that only a handful of people have seen. So, deep breath and here we go.

Looking at them this morning I suddenly remembered how much I love painting. When I first started out I wanted every single piece of work to be loaded with meaning and very important. These however are very personal and have no hidden meaning, polemic or whatnot. They are just paintings – for paintings sake, which is not particularly fashionable now, but since I don’t really give a shit about that anymore I think that makes them much stronger.I haven’t painted for about 8 months, which, regardless of what any of you may think, I think is a shame. I love the battle with the three colours I use (red, yellow and blue) and the two tones (black and white) the pressure of the brush on the canvas and the general state of happiness I stumble into when I’m painting. So I had a thought.

I used to write on “let’s see what happens” but I haven’t for ages, and I’m a tad ashamed to go back. I would have have written this post on that blog but I seem to have lost passwords etc, which is crap excuse, but it’s all I’ve got. Let’s see what happens was started, as you may know, by Paul Colman, who had a bit of an argument with a mountain and some snow and was saved by the Mountain Rescue in a helicopter. Which was rather considerate of them. Now Paul mentions that, at some point, he would like to raise some money for the mountain rescue so here’s my idea.

1. I pledge to paint at least once a week.
2. I document the progress (like Rolf Harris - “can you see what it is yet?”).
3. When the picture is finished there is some kind of auction
4. The money goes to the Mountain Rescue.

Paul is that ok with you? Can I come back to “Let’s see what happens?” Would that be interesting? Would anybody buy this kind of stuff?

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So that’s how it all started. Shame I never finished them - but good that the mountain rescue painting got done.

Francis in my kitchen.

Being dead is a funny old thing; it’s like being alive but everything is purple, the rent is cheap, the hours are good and you get to meet some people you had always admired but could never meet because, well, they were dead.

Like Francis Bacon. I’d always admired him but he was dead and famous and stuff and so the chances of meeting him and having a good chat were always very slim.

Well, that’s all changed now because I’m dead too and I get to live on the creative square (I’ll explain how the afterlife works soon, but it’s basically like a chess board over here), and Francis happens to be my next door neighbour. Which is cool.

So Francis popped over the other night to see if I had any cheese. It turns out (and I’ve been told this by Edvard) that Francis is potty about cheese. Mad for it he is. And he’d run out and came over to see if I had any.

I had stilton.

There is something you should know about Francis, he’s a bit of a nutter – a bloody good painter but a nutter none the less. Honestly, he was going on and on about cheese and laundry and the price of soup. I wanted to get his opinion on my painting but he wasn’t having any of it and merely mumbled, “dead is a jolly good thing to be if you want to get an excellent price for a piece of work” and went back over to his flat. “And you my dear boy, are dead as dead can be”.

Then he closed the door, and both he and my stilton were gone.

The bloody nutter.

This was my only painting. It’s the only one I ever managed to finish before I died. That’s right I’m dead; I’ve gone for good and nothing else will follow. Sorry if we didn’t get a chance to say a proper good-bye but it was as much a surprise for me as it may have been for you.It’s the only painting of mine on your side of something they jokingly call over here “the fence” so look after the bloody thing. I’m working on a couple of new paintings over here and if Edvard Munch will leave me alone long enough to be getting on with them they may actually be quite good. He’s a real pain in the arse is old Edvard and wants me show him how to twitter and blog and other bits and pieces.

We’ve only got one computer and Jackson Pollock hogs it all the time the drunken, miserable, son of a bitch so I might not be posting that much but I’ll do my best. If I spot God I’ll let you know, but Da Vinci has been here for bloody years and says he’s never met the girl.

Anyway, got to shoot, I’m meeting David Ogilvy at Starbucks. He’s pretty pissed about something I wrote a while back and has been hunting me down ever since I pegged it. Yup, they’ve even got Starbucks over here; over here on our side of the fence. I just hope I can smoke in there.

art paranormalThe Dead ArtistThe Mountain Rescue PaintingGhost