Me & My work

I am an street artist based in the Czech Republic.

Have a look at my story.

First steps

It all started in 2007 when I was 10 years old and had many hobbies. I liked rap songs and skatebording. I bet most of you are expecting some graffiti story from a big city with trains, throw ups and coke – but you are wrong. I spent my childhood in a small village, goalkeeping in a handball team and trumpeting in a kids band. At that time there was a very popular Czech movie „GYMPL“ about two starting graffiti writers from Prague. When we saw this movie we all started to draw graffiti sketches. Some of us even found some old spray cans and started making our first tags. I myself had a book and box full of pencils and pens. I was drawing anytime and anywhere.

I was lucky enough to find a Czech oldschool graffiti crew „BKP“ in the nearest town.
They were making one of the best graffitis in the Czech Republic at that time.
I liked their graffiti pieces and wanted to paint like them.

NO SHOES story

As I mentioned earlier I was a goalkeeper in a handball team as a child. We were playing some matches and tournaments in different European countries. There was a big tournament in Poland in 2010. When we arrived at the accommodation, we had a lot of free time because the first match of this tournament wasnt untill the next day. I took my book and pencil and started drawing a new sketch. I made a few sketches and then went to bed. The next day I realized that I had not packed my sports shoes for the match.
My coach just uttered: „How typical! You have your pencils and book, but no shoes…“

Welcome to High School

In 2012 I started to study mechanical engineering desing and was good at drawing, which greatly influenced my work and I use these skills to this day. I met a lot of new people and among them my new best friend. His father had an advertising agency and sometimes we helped him with various stuff – so we were able to take some remaining material and started printing T-shirts and jumpers with our own designs.
We came up with a common FF brand for our friends T-shirts and stickers. Sometimes we also made a little comics-paper about one of our classmates or teachers. We also found a few old walls that we could spray-paint.

Wall next door

A painting rush overcame me in 2014 – it kicked off with a lot of felt-tip pen drawings, sketching graffiti and a few pages of comic book style. My home village had a shortage of available free walls where one could paint (we all know each other as neighbours). But one day as I was walking by our next door neighbours freshly white-painted wall I had an idea (which I consider one of the best ideas I had to this day) – to go and ask if I could paint on the back of the building. It was just there and then I told myself that I will give it a try (I also had nothing to loose). So I knocked on the door of our local carpenter, entered the room and said: „Good evening, I have a question…“ But the good man stopped me about 30 seconds later and told me: „White walls are here only to be made colorful“. I am sure I will remember his words all my life! And since then I had a 30 meters long and 4 meters high wall just for myself. For the next 4 years I spent almost every weekend there, painting different graffitis. I combined graffiti with various abstract paintings on canvas and also created a new comic-book world of Maezone Paradise. As I never went to an art school or painting course I only knew HB pencil, ruler, marker and spray.
After a while I also tried the airbrush, which amazed me a lot and kept me going for a long period of time. I never really liked to paint with brushes – maybe the elementary school lessons contradicted my love of freedom. I overcame this phobia of brushes only after I made a painting for my grandfather as a present for his 80th birthday. The painting showed the Virgin Mary and it took me a really long time to finish as I decided to make it look as a stained glass window. I used to go to church with my grandfather and grandmother as a child and was quite bored in the church. That is why I spent hours and hours looking at all those church paintings and stained glass windows. So I used a brush and acrylic paint. When I think about it now I don’t know how I could come up with such a crazy idea – it was such a tiring and time-consuming process to constantly and accurately draw and color every centimeter! But the result was amazing and exactly as I have imagined!
At that point I have realized the fundamental idea of ​​my future work – that one should not create just to please others and perceive only that particular beauty and perfection. One should always create in order to rest and escape from the reality of everyday life. And also not create only for the sake of profit, but mainly for ones pleasure.

DirtyFunkStyle first steps

2018 saw me getting more and more busy as I went to University and had not much time to paint. One day I did not pass an exam and got a bit angry. I went to my studio, took canvas and started painting – knowing I had only that one evening because I had to study for another exam the next day. I had no idea about what I was going to paint, just needed the time alone with myself and paint just anything. I used spraycans and made a few lines, splatters and splashes. When I finished I loved this piece, it was great. And I also loved the surge of energy and freedom it gave me. I found my new way.

Over the next few months I painted more canvases in similar style, I enjoyed it immensely and it got easier and easier. Each canvas was something original and I was very happy with it. In time I began to use painting as a kind of meditation and relaxation. I began to realize that this style of creation made much more sense to me than the things I had created before. When I think about it I learned to formulate my feelings and moods into colorful splashes and splatters. Only occasionally I struggled with my sense of precision and smoothness when one of the stains didn’t turn out the way I imagined, but after some time I overcame that by dividing the images into layers. Time passed on and I played with my work more and more, adding various painting techniques and processes.

One day I was sitting in my studio waiting for the paint to dry. During this time I tried to come up with a name that would desribe my whole work in a nutshell. I have no artistic education, don’t know any art styles and I don’t really know many artists. So I combined the words that I think best described my work:
DIRTY = all my paintings seem dirty.
FUNK = paintings contain elements from Funk graffiti.
STYLE = let it be known that it is stylish.

Idea of DirtyFunkStyle

The first and foremost idea of DirtyFunkStyle is freedom and tolerance.
Uderstanding that not everything can be as we want it to be.
Combining the non-combinable.
Making the world more colorful.
Paintings from a guy-next-door for everyone.