I have talked about this before, the reasons for starting graffiti for me were mainly about dissent. I think that still is evident in all of my work to date though it isn’t an in your face kind of dissent. It is subtle and underlies my writing, poetry, painting and drawing to an extent. I don’t like to be too full-on and want the work to get into people’s heads without a lot of trouble. The first few years of graffiti for me were a lesson in what full-on dissent can lead you down. I met all sorts of difficult people and I realised that you had to be subtle and be creative about it. Otherwise, you just wreck everything and can’t be creative in a meaningful way. I started to hang out with creative people instead of destructive types and we found ways to employ dissent with style and an explorative approach. Soon enough I was obsessed with finding new ways to employ letterforms and I think that the dissent was fashioned into a creative drive of experimentation rather than destruction.

I still feel that the destructive drive of dissent is good to see, not everyone wants to make art or be creative about it. I like the balance between the two drives when I see tags approached creatively or throw-ups sometimes it looks like it is beyond any aesthetic considerations but doesn’t seem that way at all at the same time. I think if I hadn’t had those initial experiences in graffiti I never would have chosen a creative path and things could have been quite different.