Five questions for five flicks 

Featured artist - DNIE

 

DNIE is a graffiti writer from Brisbane. He first got into graffiti in 1996 painting on the Westline and is a member of FM CREW. In the late 90's to the early 2000's he was getting busy painting loads of steel which you will see in this interview. We caught up to find out a bit more about him and asked for his favourite flicks.

1. What got you into graffiti?

When I used to walk to the train station from school I used to see all the coal trains running, covered in pieces from BWP, ACR, AKM and DS. I would think to myself that shit is dope I wanna do that. I started off tagging with some of the boys from around Ipswich in the 90s. We used to go down to coles supermarket and rack those fat Artline flowies and bomb every thing in our path. I was more into the piecing side of graffiti so it wasn't long before I decided to start painting tracksides with my little brother. We formed our own crew SOS and then in 1998 with Devo and a couple of new recruits we formed FM.

 

2. How would you describe your style and who were your influences?

Back in the day before all this social media bullshit you were able to distinguish most writers style from which line they grew up on. For me I'm  straight up Westline so my style represents that seeing BWP and ACR running the west with that funky public style. We grew up west of the Westline on the Rosewood line when there were no electric trains just silver bullets and red rattlers no pieces on that line. We didn't know any other writers so we had to school ourselves. We developed our style by painting trains and our influence came from each other. Veinzy had the dopest styles from our crew, so i would have to say that Veinzy had the most influence on my style and still does to this day. Veinz had the mad letter styles while I did all the dope characters. A few years later we hooked up with BWP which then had another influence on my style especially ALE 21 with his characters.

 

3. What was the Brisbane train scene like in the late 90's - early 2000's?

The Brisbane train scene was pumping in the late 90s early 2000s. The yards were getting smashed and it was a dream come true for every train writer. There were some really dope trains getting done back then it was crazy. We did our fare share of dope panels and whole cars and at that time I was one of the very few writers who had pulled off a solo whole car, no sub either just a bag full of beans and 3 milk crates. But to be fair WTCS took shit to another level with the quality and quantity of what they did. We were smashing shit at the time but we were really reckless and ended up getting hit really hard by GTF and everyone in our crew ended up doing a bit of jail time at some point, so you can see why our crew dropped off the scene after leaving such a mark in the Brissy scene. But we are back now and had a fresh crewy running all city the other day for 5 days.

 

4. Do you have a good chase story?

Veinz was living at my place at Oxley, and we were under surveillance from the Graffiti Task Force. We went down to the Sherwood scout hall to do a trackside. While we were painting we saw 3 guys walking down the lines toward us. They were dressed like writers so we just continued to paint. They came up to the fence we were painting behind and said "how you going?". My brother recognised one of the guys as GTF and said Rail Squad run! We took off and they gave chase. We started running toward Corinda station and a cattle train was going past slow enough that Veinz and I were able to jump on the back of. We rode the train to Oxley which was the next station and by this this time the train had picked up a bit of speed so was a hectic jump off. we ran to the closest phone box and called a taxi so we didn't have to walk the streets. As we pulled into the street, GTF surrounded the taxi with three cars. We took off again without paying for the fare this time GTF chased us in their cars trying to run us down.

We ended up jumping a few fences and cutting through a few houses to get away. Veinzy climbed up on the roof of the daycare centre next door while I went to go check out the house. I still hadn't figured out we were under surveillance and GTF knew where we were staying. I went round the back of the house and the back door was wide open. I thought my girl had left it open for me. I got to the door and saw the police rummaging through our stuff in the lounge room. I turned round and legged it back to the daycare centre. I climbed up onto the roof with my bro and watched GTF ransack the house for a couple of hours. we got away that night but GTF impounded Veinzys car that we had left behind and came back and pinched me a couple days later. 

 

5. What motivates you to keep painting?

Being king of the West, but I just love being out there pushing my skills, painting with real writers, hanging out with crew. The west has been too quiet for a long time and I want to bring it back and pave the way for the up and coming Westies. I could never be just a legal painter fuck that shit that ain't real graff!!!! When graffiti is a huge part of your life and all of a sudden you cant do it anymore it really takes its toll. It felt like something inside of me had died for a long time. All I can say is that it’s good to be back!

Big Ups Veinz, Devo, Bear, Sensr, Guter & Erka FM. Typan BWP. Free Hopeski FM

 

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