Rhyse

I’ve been into graffiti since I was 12, you know, trying tags on paper and stuff. I don’t think at that time I really understood the concept of graffiti. My best friend started really getting into it, tagging and bombing at night while I was still a little bit undecided about breaking the law.

I did some tagging but I guess I was just scared of getting caught. Through my friend who was seriously getting up in the scène I got to know more writers and learned more about creating graffiti. Drawing lots of sketches helped me to create my own style I guess and I painted my first piece on my bedroom wall in 1994. After getting arrested in that same year with my friends who did this tunnel on broad daylight I decided to just go legal from that point on. When citycounsel appointed an old industrial site as a freehaven for graffiti (until it got demolished) I had my place to practice so I learned and progressed. When I got beter people started asking me to paint their walls and that’s how things continued.

At the same time I was partying alot, smoking weed and drinking since I was 14 years. When I started getting to know more of the older writers I got in conctact with cocaine. I realised that stuf was highly addictive and seeing my friends around me wasting their lives on that stuff kinda gave me a reality check. And that was the time God came knocking on my door.

I’ve been raised in a Christian home but as a teenager I decided God didn’t excist. But seeing my life taking a turn for the worst and not knowing who I was any more made me search for more in life. My sister invited me to spend the holiday with her and her friends from church and so I ended up in church one day discussing this hoiliday, wich I had decided was probably a better way of spending my summer than as I was living at the moment. That church visit changed my life I as I felt for the First time the power of the Holy Spirit. It freaked me out because I didn’t know what it was but I get curious I guess so I went one more time during a youth rally and when I got there I just knew I had to give my life back to God. God became so real for me that night and He set me free from drugs, smoking, cussing and porn.

After that life changing experience the pastor found out I was into grafftiti so he asked me to do a mural for him and that started a whole new direction for me in graffiti. At the same time I finished art school wich got me into a whole lot of other art forms. Right now I work as an art teacher and if it wasn’t for God I would never have gotten there. It’s so awsome to use your talents to praise the Creator of all things!