Nerks

Going to many different countries and cities and on road and rail trips it’s important to realize that anything is possible and you can do what you want in graffiti. I feel it’s important to be open-minded to learning new styles and appreciating local writers’ styles who paint in the countries and cities you’re visiting. Having respect for locals in places where you are not local is a key thing and to learn a little bit about what they do.

Painting in London is a really cool place and I try to take advantage of it. Painting in a city where it has so many writers from all over the world is a crazy thing, that all of us from wherever we grew up are in a very specific place and into the same thing. London has a whole load of great history in graffiti and I feel it’s important to keep that in mind and also push the city forward in my own way.

London has some of the most multicultural communities are some of the most interesting places you’ll ever visit and I for one and everyone else in London I would think that motivates them to do graffiti in their own way, it’s important to respect why people paint for different reasons and learn from that because there’s so many way to go graffiti and there’s not only just one or two ways to do it. However, growing up in Bournemouth I think it’s a place where I felt I had to try much harder to be known and recognised because it’s not so open to graffiti and it’s a much smaller place than London, so I would travel to Southampton, Bristol, Cardiff, Portsmouth and other cities as well as London.

In terms of styles and lettering I feel it’s very important to try and develop a style that is you and even styles because to be versatile in graffiti with styles adds weight to your name just like traveling. I like to feel that I keep myself moving and I am trying new things as I go on in my journey. In the last 3 years I’ve tried to merge graffiti letters, so the styles I was doing before and merging them with tattoo and font lettering styles. Right now, I’m trying to break the mold and find new approaches but still keep that flavor but always try new things but also remember that there can always be improvements and things need to be changed constantly.

I recently did a raw wall which was a big stretch of clean unpainted walls and wanted to do each piece with different styles, different approaches and themes. Instead of just the colors and a bit of change with the outline, it’s important to keep learning and pushing forward. I feel that my graffiti life is quite unique and not like many other people in the world, which I really like because I’m on my own wave and doing my thing. As I’m learning tattooing I can blend what I learn in both mediums to each other and try and come up with unique stuff.

As the years go on in graffiti, it’s harder and harder to stand out and look different so  I feel that traveling is key to breaking that boundary as such because you can see such unique  things that no one from your local scene may have seen. From night time motorways in  Portugal, painting in a basketball court in a Slovakian ghetto and traveling through the arid  desert in Northern/Central Mexico its all things I’ve seen and it’s from your own perspective and learn a way how you can relate that to your styles. From studying lettering styles in  tattooing to a very precise way to make sure the letters are exactly how they’re meant to be, it’s made me refine my letters in a certain way but not lose any flavor. Tattooing is  something I’ve wanted to do for many years, so I’m glad I’m able to try and mix them together  and put the designs on peoples skin.