00:00 I'm Karl Stafford, artist. I would class myself as surrealist. Salvador Dali, Esher,
00:07 and all the surrealist movements I really like. When I first saw the flat I didn't realise
00:18 that Van Gogh lived in this area and he taught in this area.
00:29 We had a look at the flat and decided I was going to have it. We sat in the park, Spencer
00:36 Square, and we noticed that there's a bust about that high. We went, "Oh, that's Van
00:42 Gogh's." We read about it, then realised he actually lived here. Then he taught here at
00:49 a boys' boarding school across the road. Then I looked like him.
00:56 It was like, "Wow, this is amazing. I'm an unknown artist. No one knows who I am." Van
01:03 Gogh was kind of like the same. No one knew who he was. No one recognised him. He had
01:10 no money because it was Theo that kept him, his brother. I'm kind of like, what do you
01:20 call it? I'm on a par with him, even though it's 300 years ago. He's the same. When he
01:27 lived here, no one knew who he was. I'm the same. No one knows who I am. We're kind of
01:37 like clicked in that kind of way.
01:41 You said that you looked like him. Did you ever get mistaken?
01:45 I did when I went to the Van Gogh thing in London. I took my other half's straw hat and
01:52 I sat in the room with this straw hat and everyone's looking at me twice. Then when it kind of
02:03 finished and we went to reception, the reception lady said I had to look twice because I really
02:10 thought that was Van Gogh sitting in the corner with a straw hat on. So every now and again,
02:16 if I put my straw hat on, I look like Van Gogh a little bit. I like to think that I'm
02:21 his kind of like brother in the 21st century.
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