Helge Schwarzer: a successful pricewinning hurdler preparing for Olympia 2012 - and an ambitious graffiti artist.

Homepage: http://www.helge-schwarzer.de/
Fanpage: http://www.facebook.com/HelgeSchwarzer

He submitted some of his amazing works he did with ONE4ALL™ markers and paint which you can check out in the gallery below. This is what Helge had to say about how the two worlds of Graffiti and sports affect and fertilize each other:

„I´m an athletic since 1996 and started spraying in 2000, after being introduced to Graffiti by friends. Pretty early I had a wall for me to paint on legaly and started visiting halls in between training sessions to check out the latest pieces. Especially the FCK-crew from Hannover, Koast, Dast and Diko to name the most influential, were very inspiring to me. I´ve never been super busy in the scene due to my tough trainig schedule so I kept in touch via internet and concentrated on working on canvas and paper. Today there are so many amazing artists out there that inspire me, like Daim, Dare, Atom, Pose, Ewok, Sofles, Askew, Revok, Rime, MadC, Does,... .

Graffiti is a very important part of my life that helps me to stay down to earth. Whenever I travel by train I keep on watching out the window to discover new pieces. That´s something that reminds me where I´m from and will surely never change. To me Graffiti is dateless. It surrounds me everywhere. As soon as you develope a sense for it you realize how much Graffiti alters today´s cityscape. Many attributes that enthuse me for sports and my discipline in particular I discover in Graffiti. Aesthetics, form, severity, consonance, contrast, .... . Sports and art are two different issues, yet to me interlinked by so many things.

To quote Michael Jordan:

"What´s important to me is when they´ve been given these opportunities away from the game that it don´t affect what they´ve done on the court. No matter what contract I signed it never affected what I was doin´on the Basketball court. The basketball was always my refuge in terms of just where i can go out and really be creative and everything else fall off of that. And the thing that I try to teach is no matter how much we are trying to promote and market you as an individual, as a person, as a basketball player, you still have to go out there and play the game of basketball, for the reasons why you played the game from day one, which was for the love of the game!"

"This quote means EVERYTHING and fits to me perfectly. I love my sport and Graffiti, the things that are defining my life.“