Hello My Name Is: Laia

Name: Laia
Crew: CK
City/Country: Barcelona, Spain

When did you start writing?
I started making tags and sketches in 1999, but until the following year I didn’t do my first piece.

What’s graffiti for you?
My best friend and my worst enemy.

Influences?
If I was a person with many influences I wouldn’t be painting the same thing for the last 20 years. hahaha.

Tell us about your city, how is life and graffiti there?
There is a lot of movement and a lot of tourism and that also brings many different styles. In my city, you pick up a stone and you get 30 graffiti writers.

What keeps you still writing?
Painting is my best disconnection from the world and my way of discharging energy. There are people who do yoga or boxing, I paint graffiti. I haven’t experimented yet an activity that makes me feel the way graffiti does so I will continue painting until I get tired.

What first made you interested in graffiti and how did you end up on that track?
I started making sketches with my name to give them to my friends at school. Later on, watching The Fresh Prince on TV I realised I wanted to buy sprays, due to the main scene where he shows painting a wall and is caught by the police. That day i bought my first cans.

What trends are you seeing now in the graffiti world that you don’t like?
I do not like this tendency of extra garbage style. I like dirty pieces with a trash style, but there is a tendency for exaggeration that only makes me think that those people do not know how to paint. I also do not like the super admiration towards that style. I would like to know if those people are capable of making a clean piece.

What do you do when you’re not painting?
I work too much..

How would you describe your style?
Under my eye, pieces are like people’s faces, some are good looking, some are not that attractive, some inspire truthfulness and other don’t. Basically, you fall in love with ones and others horrify you. I try to make my pieces look like those chubby cute humans you’d like to cuddle with them 24/7.

Can you remember the first piece you did?
Yes, it was in a river in the town of a friend. It only had two colors (light grey and light violet, horrible) and you can imagine how it was ….

Future plans?
Work less and paint as much as I can. Travel as a way of life doing what i like the most. Feeling free is the main idea.

Do you adapt your pieces and tags to the spot/surface?
Yes, obviously…!

What do you think about the new generation of writers in your city?
When I was young it used to be respect to veteran graffiti writers, a respect that i can’t see nowadays. We had a non scripted rules that we had to follow and now a kid can come and cover a full color piece with a nasty shitty silver. This is the new generation that grows in my city.

What are the best and worst aspects of graffiti?
The best I get doing graffiti is all the adventures I have had lived, I actually live and the future ones. That involves traveling, sharing experiences with friends or alone and the knowledge of how far I can go.
The worst part is the jealousy that people has to each other. By the act of painting, people feeds their ego and can even harm others thru a nonsense battle searching to be recognized as the best, ridiculous.

Who do you paint for?
I paint for me, to fill my albums with nice new stuff 🙂

What writers have inspired you?
Mainly my inspo comes from the old tapes of trains covered by pieces from WUFC, SDK, etc……. I also get inspired by the first New York graffiti writers.

Can you ever feel tired of graffiti?
I’m tired of the world that surrounds graffiti, not of the action.

What do you hope people will think and feel when they see your stuff?
I don’t really hope anything because as I said before I do it for me, but what I would be happy to know is that they get that good energy I put on every single piece.

FIVE FAVORITES
Spray Paint: I don’t publicity brands that do not pay me hahah.
City: New York
Markers/pens: Krink
Surface: Metal it’s my favourite but is the one I less paint on.
Cap: Pocket

Instagram: @iamlaia