3 Days Of Painting With ‘getting There’ As Our Main Catchphrase.

Together with Anmar Mirza and our team we ventured through a handful of cities in Belgium and The Netherlands to transform hip and young community coffee bars. Our first stop was in Amsterdam, to the friendly folks at Caffènation.

Received with open arms — and a cup of coffee — we got things started as soon as the material arrived.

Seeing MRZA at work is a visual treat. Inspired by a plethora of artists from Van Gogh, Picasso and M.C. Escher through to modern street artists, he certainly created his own distinct and recognizable style, continuously improving his skills by using new techniques and merging different art forms.

Every piece that he creates has a certain symbolism for the environment he’s working in. Community bars receive a variety of customers: young and old, extravagant or just ‘there for the atmosphere and good vibes’, and those aspects are exactly what he tried to capture in his work.

Day one was over before we knew it, and even though work lasted until way past our bedtime, some things are just aren’t to be messed with; once the flow takes over, you don’t stop. Letting Anmar loose on naked, empty walls was one of the best things we’ve done. Without any restriction or holdbacks, the best in him came out, delivering stunning results.

After a sturdy breakfast, a long warm-up and a good tour through the city, things got going again. A couple hours after starting on where he left off the day before, we could really see all the separate pieces coming together into one big whole – a story if you will. By using such a large colour-palette it takes any artist a required amount of time to get the composition lined up, albeit first in his head, later on the wall. It’s very strange watching this come together when you aren’t right there, first hand, inside Anmar’s brain. ‘Getting there’ was one of the many quotes we heard repeatedly in these confined quarters, but the vibe was always good.

The joy of working with Mirza is that looking away for 10 minutes can give you a totally different perspective on his work. Or, in this case, his artistic self just decides to sprint over to another wall and lay on another piece in the blink of an eye.As we were amazed by the perseverance of our creative talent (it’s certainly not an easy task to blend everything together in a confined space, surrounded by intoxicating spray-fumes and noisy colleagues running around), work just went on till the end of the night.

At a certain point it was necessary to uncover the furniture and interior decorations and place them into position to get a decent overview of the transformed space. Retracing your steps, checking if everything lines up with the art and architecture is a must. Without keeping this in mind, a mural can quickly turn into something bombastic and overwhelming, especially with a style like Anmar which without the intense care that goes into each piece would not have worked. Fortunately, this was not the case, MRZA has had so much experience with previous indoor projects, that this was all in a day’s (night’s work).

To see the finished result, you really have to visit Caffènation Amsterdam yourself. but this should give you a pretty good impression of how it was before we returned for the second time, to lay the last touches to the artwork, add some extra details and meet with the owners.

A big thank you goes out to owners from Caffènation Amsterdam, we had a blast and really enjoyed spending these few days in one of the best coffee places of the West.