TSW Sketchbook ca. ‘91
A friend of mine gave me this PDF with scans he made from old black-and-white copies of sketches, not only by TSW / The Style Warriorz, but loads of others aswell. In some cases it's hard to tell who made the original sketch, since at that times, people used to make their own tag on these copies, before they were given way to the next guy.
A few names here are Scez / Zoe (the later Keno (R.I.P.)), Menace, Jore, Eton, Newton, Caras, D-Nize, Jase, B-Base, me, and then there's some stuff from other towns and UK aswell.
The quality is bad, I think it was one of his first tries to digitally archive stuff in the late 90s... (and of course, many of the copies have been bad quality already before that)
A Shift in the Direction 1997-1998
As one can imagine from reading my former posts about my history, these birth- and death-experiences led to a shift in the direction of my life. And as there has been a shift in the direction of my life, there has been a shift in my artistical expression also. My works started to point more and more inwards and became more influenced by geometrical, fractal patterns or organical ones on the other hand.
Here you can see my first kaleidoscope-like works emerging out of the letter K, which later led me to my logo which I still use and I´m still working with these geometrical-fractal patterns that I created out of the essence of my graffiti styles.
Kenmo and the Grim Reaper 1995
In 1995 things began to change for me. I was now in my early twenties, moved out of my parents house and finished school finally. Then I had to do a ridiculous job in a temping agency to be able to pay my rent before I started my civilian service instead of army. I had my first real horrifying glance into societys everyday life and it was depressing. In fact I got really depressed, so depressed that I couldn´t do any artistic work for a while. On christmas eve I was close to jump out the window of my flat in the 5th floor. Some strange pull drew me to the window, I was in a kind of trance, when suddenly two of my best friends from school ringed at the door at 12 in the night. Those two girls just had the right intuition in the right moment and went having a look for me, knowing very well about my depression at that times.
This way I survived my encounter with the 'Grim Reaper' and promised myself to never kill myself, regardless of what ever happens in my future life.
I often found my earlier art works so significant when I looked back at it later. Several times I found my art works to predict my future issues.
The Story Continues – 1994
In 1994 I continued to paint massive amounts of pieces for that time. There was nothing else I could think of, really. All I had was Hip Hop and Graffiti and I made full use of it, not being very aware yet that doing so often meant avoiding other stuff - the problems in my family especially. I think this might quite well have been the peak level of my early Graffiti 'career'.
Summer 1993
In the summer following the contest I had a good time travelling around a bit and painting a lot. I think I never painted as much as I did in that time. I was still a teenager and it felt just right. Life seemed easy for a while.
I went to Munich with a friend and I was invited to paint in Dresden, where I went with my new friends from Hamburg.
From there we moved straight forward to Itzehoe, where a big graffiti happening took place at a huge industrial area that was permitted to be painted everywhere. This area then became the biggest Hall of Fame in northern Germany for more than a decade before it was torn down finally.
And I went to Hamburg lots...
