Interview: MEGA & ROMEO

Mega: When it comes to painting, 90% of the times we paint together (since 1988), so a dual interview seems logic since people know us best as a writer duo. We like to call ourselves brothers in paint.

Romeo: we are one together, megaromeo or romeomega is our trademark. We are the brothers from different mothers, so if you call one, we both look around.

You said you have worked together for 30 years, how did you two meet?

Mega: Back in the days you had to discover everything by yourself by traveling to other cities or countries to see what was happening. Nowadays when painting a piece it can be on the internet already before you’re even at home. You can see what is happening all over the globe within a few mouse clicks. And of course the paint is a lot better nowadays.

Romeo: pfff a lot, first of all the quality of the paint and the mentality of the writers. When we started, all people who were into writing were half street kid half criminal, we had to steal the paint and there were no halls of fame. Everybody worked illegal and as a writer you had a don’t fuck with my attitude.

Mega: The atmosphere you find in abandoned places is addictive. Nothing beats a raw silverpiece on a decayed wall. Also those places are great to make amazing photos. The environment makes the piece look a lot stronger, sometimes it even looks as if it was shot on a filmset in a horror movie or on a different planet.

Romeo: The feeling of putting something new on something old. In a place that is totally taken over by nature a freshly painted chrome piece does miracles. The backgrounds that no writer can paint better than nature can create and the amazing places that sometimes still have the stuff from the day it closed.

Mega: Nice question, I loved to watch old cartoons, the first thing that pops into my mind is Scooby Doo … Because he was a bit of a daredevil and also a bit of a rascal.

Romeo: Hanna Barbera for sure, simple style and hell of funny.

Mega: I prefer to paint in abandoned buildings, but painting for the first time in New York was also very special for me, but if I have to choose just one, I would say Roskilde festival in Denmark. We painted during daytime for several days with a lot of talented people and during the evening / night there was time to hang out with them which normally doesn’t happen that often when you paint with other people.

Romeo: As an old school hip hop lover I have to say NEW YORK, the vibe of the city had us in his filthy clutches.

Mega: Chrome and black is definitely a favorite, but I also love it when a color scheme comes out better than we thought like for instance the ‘going4gold’ piece.

Romeo: Hmmm, no writer should have a favorite color scheme, but we like to work with bright colors and do chrome and black pieces.

Mega: Letters always come first, that’s the most important for me. Also the spot (environment) where I paint is important. Sometimes if there is a palmtree in the back for instance, it makes the picture a lot better than just a plain wall that could be around the corner.

Romeo: Letters come first, style is the most important thing for a writer. It is called writing, you can’t write anything else than letters otherwise it should have been called drawing.

Mega: For us the essence is making ‘good’ letters (in our eyes with style/hip hop flavour), after making more than 1000 pieces we know a lot of tricks to make the whole wall look nicer. We call this the bag of tricks. So adding some characters and a nice background is something we specialize in during the years… Of course we also do like to make just spontaneous pieces without a plan but there aren’t a lot of writers who make production walls. There are also a lot of artists out there that do great murals but for me that is not graffiti, When there are no letters involved I think they are just muralists, it’s just a different discipline.

Romeo: I think he is half right about that. When we started writing we never did productions and characters. When we were talking about what we could do to improve ourselves we decided to put a background and use the same colors and that evolved into what we do now.

Mega: Since I designed the book (I work as a graphic designer) it was an emotional thing for me. I first had to go through all the pieces we did since 1985.

I noticed we made a lot of shit during all those years, but also a lot of good stuff. It was an eye opener to see some directions we explored but never went on with it.. By filtering out the best work we did during all those years gave new insights. The original idea was to make a portfolio book with just pictures and a few words to go with it, but when we showed it to some people they wanted to hear the stories behind the pictures, it was then that we realized we should make a book. The process of completing the book took about 7 years, we did special projects and had to gather a lot of stuff which just had to be in the book. This took a lot of time. But the endresult is a 288 page hardcover book which has never been published before like this (at least not in the Netherlands). With lots of tips, info about the Dutch writing history and also a lot of things.

Romeo: Well to be honest that book was 7 years in the making, we knew we had the pictures, the info and the stories but we were thinking who is waiting for a Romeomega book?  We got a change to do it and went for it, it shows that everything is possible for everybody as long as you stick to what you are doing.

Mega: Starting to work on our second book 😉 No seriously, just trying to improve and make the perfect piece. We also love to travel to other places we haven’t been before and leave our names over there.

Romeo: we just do what we always did, it is part of our lives and we will see what the future brings for us.

If you’re interested in our book, it can be ordered at www.sons.nl

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