There’s no helping it—I have to come back to this project one more time.
This mural was unlike anything I’ve ever worked on in several different ways, and the people I got to paint alongside were just incredibly interesting. So here’s my behind-the-scenes report on creating the third-longest collaborative mural in Europe, along with a few of my favorite stories and memorable encounters from the experience.
From the very beginning, I knew this project was going to be something special. A few months ago, Petr Hájek, curator at Chemistry, and Petr Kopal, one of the organizers behind the Urban Pictus street art festival, asked whether I’d like to take part in an event where fifteen Czech and fifteen international artists would come together to paint a 700-meter-long wall.
For quite some time now, whenever I’m painting a mural, people keep telling me—in a million different ways—„Just make sure nobody sprays graffiti all over it.“ That’s what they mean, anyway.
Regardless of the fact that street art grew out of graffiti, and regardless of how much respect you personally have for graffiti culture, one thing is impossible to ignore: most people walking through the city simply don’t understand graffiti, and they don’t enjoy looking at it. That got me thinking about what I could paint—or write—in my section of the wall that would genuinely make people happy.
That’s how the idea of small acts of kindness was born.
I loved the idea of giving the wall a purpose beyond what the street artist Sainer once described in an interview as „showing your balls“—in other words, demonstrating how well you can paint (and I don’t mean that in a negative way at all). I wanted to create something people could experience both from afar and up close. Something that highlighted a subject we rarely talk about enough: simple human kindness and consideration for one another.
I kept thinking about all those endless internet arguments—dog owners complaining about cyclists, cyclists complaining about pedestrians, drivers at war with cyclists, cyclists hating rollerbladers… you know the kind.
It struck me that ordinary kindness fit the festival’s theme—Beauty, City, Movement—perfectly.
Because although it often feels as if we’re all chasing success, money, or these days perhaps longevity , the truth is that simple everyday kindness is one of the things keeping society from falling apart completely. If we all treated each other with just a little more patience and consideration, city life would probably become a much nicer place for everyone.
That was the central idea behind my mural.
When I invited people—through my social media and the Prague 6 magazine—to send me stories about moments when someone had shown them kindness, I had absolutely no idea what would happen.
Within just a few days I found myself reading story after story with my jaw on the floor. You shared so many beautiful moments that deserved to become paintings. Very quickly I realized there was no possible way I could include them all.
Even so, thank you. Every single one of those stories meant the world to me.
Reading them was moving, inspiring, and ultimately every one of them found its way into the mural in one form or another.
In the end, I distilled them into a simple visual story.
A young woman rescues a dog from an animal shelter. She takes it—perhaps to visit patients as part of animal-assisted therapy—to brighten an elderly woman’s day in hospital. The woman recovers and later bakes a cake for a young family. The mother, re-energized by this small act of kindness, finds the strength to reconcile with her partner. He goes for a run (symbolizing kindness toward yourself), and while running he gives some spare change to a homeless man. Moments later, the homeless man notices a bus approaching and grabs the leash of the very same rescued dog, preventing it from running into the road. The dog is reunited with its owner, bringing the story full circle.
The entire sequence was meant to illustrate the butterfly effect—the idea that you never really know where a single good deed, or even a tiny act of kindness, might lead, or whose life it may ultimately change for the better.
There were several challenges in turning this into a mural.
For one thing, this little story could easily fill several pages of a comic book. I couldn’t simply shrink everything down and expect people to read it comfortably on a wall. And secondly, I wanted the mural to be bold and vibrant so it wouldn’t disappear among the incredible works of the other artists. I knew everyone invited would bring their absolute best—and that usually means striking, powerful colour.
In the end, only the essence of the story—and of all your stories—remained on the wall. But I actually think that’s for the best. It doesn’t have to be understood literally. Sometimes a symbol says enough.
Another challenge was that over the past year I’ve deliberately started travelling to selected workshops—mostly abroad—to improve my painting technique.
Learning to paint is a lot like learning to run, or mastering any other skill: before you can get better, you first have to unlearn most of the things you’ve been doing wrong.
For me, that meant changing the way I paint murals. I already had my own tried-and-tested approach, combining traditional brush painting with large spray-painted areas, which are, of course, much faster to cover. But ever since painting the mural of Milada Horáková on Milada Horáková Street, I’ve been trying to paint almost everything with brushes alone. The end result looks much better—but it also takes several times longer.
Now add the hottest days ever recorded, together with the knowledge that you have just one month to paint three separate walls. And you don’t get to choose the timing, because two of them are festival commissions. You either accept them or miss out on the work altogether.
Yes, you’ve guessed it—that combination is the perfect recipe for a small but very personal meltdown. The kind where you’re convinced you simply can’t pull it off. That the mural is going to look terrible, and on top of that you’ll be the world’s worst parent because you’ve promised your kids a trip to the sea and end up thinking you won’t even make it there.
Fortunately, none of that happened.
I’m writing this report from the beautiful Slovenian seaside town of Piran, where I arrived with my children the day before yesterday. Looking back, there are a few things that made all the difference.
First and foremost, I had the unwavering support of my wonderful husband and my friends. They’ve all been through mural projects with me before, so they’ve already heard me crying, „Aaaah, help! It’s going to look awful!“ more than once. Instead of panicking, they did what they always do—they calmly assured me I’d figure it out.
The thing about murals is that sometimes the sheer size of the wall completely overwhelms you. It feels like it’s about to swallow you whole, and your first instinct is simply to run away—which, for several obvious reasons, isn’t exactly the smartest option. And then there’s another problem: until it’s finished, a mural almost always looks… pretty terrible.
If you’re working on a painting in your studio, you can simply turn it toward the wall and ignore it for a while—or forever. But a mural? Every unfinished brushstroke is out there in public for everyone to see.
Oh dear.
I suspect almost every mural artist feels this way, and I don’t think those feelings disappear just because you’ve painted more walls or become more successful.
For me, the thought that this is going to be my worst mural yet, everyone will see it, I’ll completely exhaust myself in the process… and what exactly is the point of all this anyway? shows up almost every single time.
I’ve come to believe that the only thing you can really do is prepare yourself for it. Accept that this relentless feeling of complete inadequacy is simply part of the process—and get used to the fact that every now and then, it’s going to show up anyway.
So, what actually helped?
To begin with, the way the two organizers from Chemistry ran the event was a masterclass in how projects like this should be done. They managed to coordinate thirty artists from all over the world, along with countless volunteers, in a way that kept everyone relaxed, nobody stressed anyone else out, and everyone felt genuinely cared for.
During the worst heatwave, they even kept bringing us ice cream. Honestly, what more is there to say?
So if you’re reading this—thank you. Taking such good care of us made it possible for all of us to do our very best work.
Another thing that helped was consulting my physiotherapist before the project even began. We went through my entire workflow together so I wouldn’t completely destroy my body.
Besides the obvious advice—like drinking plenty of water (I was getting through nearly four litres a day in that heat)—he suggested a few less obvious improvements. One was to make every task easier wherever possible.
For me, that meant buying my own paint trolley so I’d never have to carry heavy paint buckets around again. And it also meant wearing the most comfortable footwear I could find.
Not running shoes.
Not hiking shoes.
But what my kids lovingly call my „dog shoes.“
They’re made entirely of foam, and each one somehow looks like a dog’s head. (You’ll spot them in about half the photos.) They’re basically the softest slippers imaginable, and after spending a month standing on my feet eight to ten hours a day, they made a huge difference to my aching ankles.
Last but certainly not least, I was incredibly grateful for the support of the other artists.
Street art festivals can sometimes have an almost uncomfortably competitive atmosphere—understandably so, since many of the artists come from a graffiti background.
This festival was nothing like that.
Want to know who I became friends with the most?
These were my favourite fellow artists on the Ruzyně wall. (And once again, my apologies to everyone else—I simply can’t mention every wonderful conversation and every kind encounter. But I genuinely treasure all of them and carry those memories with me.)
1. Emic — On Dreams
Emic is a painter from Belfast who, as far as I can tell, has a classical fine art background. His walls are filled with beautiful figurative paintings. If I observed his process correctly, he usually starts with a dark background and patiently builds up delicate layers of spray paint. The result is surprisingly realistic while still remaining expressive. He has an incredible command of depth of field and negative space, and his muted colour palette creates paintings that feel as though they exist somewhere between dreaming and waking.
My favourite Emic story actually happened while I was painting my own wall.
A woman came up to me and started reading aloud the words I’d written on the wall as part of my preparatory grid (it’s called a doodle grid). I wanted to explain what they were, so I said,
„Those are little acts of kindness people sent me.“
She replied,
„Well… I don’t like it.“
I said,
„That’s absolutely your right. It’s contemporary art—it doesn’t have to appeal to everyone.“
And she answered,
„You don’t understand. I don’t like your mural. Everyone else’s is great.“
Later I wandered over to tell Emic about it. He was painting just two sections away.
He laughed and told me that on one of his recent murals he’d painted roses with paint appearing to drip down from them. He showed me the piece on Instagram—it was absolutely gorgeous, and creating that effect with spray paint is anything but easy.
Then he said,
„People actually wrote to the city council to complain about the drips.“
Emic has this unmistakable aura of effortless cool around him, so hearing that even artists at his level still get those kinds of reactions was strangely comforting.
Thank you, Emic—not only for sharing that story, but also for suffering through that terrible coffee from the restaurant next door with me.
I hope we’ll meet again soon—maybe next time somewhere up north!
(Emic is one of the organisers of the Hit the North street art festival, which is absolutely worth following. Ireland has an incredible mural scene.)
2. Vincent Chignier — On Wildness
I first met Vincent, a French painter, two years ago in Brno while he was painting a huge electrical substation—with his dad helping him.
Whenever I see Vincent, I automatically associate him with good spirits and contagious enthusiasm.
Like many of the artists at Ruzyně, he paints figurative murals, but his work is infused with an intensely psychedelic aesthetic. His walls are populated by hippie-inspired characters who look as though they’ve wandered out of a blissful LSD trip—or escaped from Burning Man or a techno festival.
I absolutely love them.
3. Tim Marsh — On Energy
Tim Marsh is a street artist with roots in graffiti culture who now lives in Barcelona.
This wasn’t his first time painting in the Czech Republic. If you’ve ever been to Holešovice, you’ve probably seen his fantastic portrait of Sir David Attenborough.
Painting figures that are literally larger than life is no easy task—I know that firsthand after painting my mural of Milada Horáková. The challenge is always finding the balance between a contemporary artistic language and keeping the portrait recognisable without drifting into awkwardness—or worse, unintentional comedy.
Tim pulls it off brilliantly.
His portrait of Attenborough—and his contribution to the Ruzyně wall—works because of one thing above all: extraordinary colour energy.
His geometric, graffiti-inspired shapes radiate movement and light.
In many ways, Tim is trying to achieve something very similar to what I’m aiming for myself: modelling forms not through perfectly smooth gradients but through mosaics of vibrant shapes—in my case, through visible brushstrokes.
That’s one of the reasons I feel such a connection to his work.
At Ruzyně he painted (or perhaps is still painting!) a sequence of a runner in different phases of movement. Once it’s finished, people will be able to photograph the mural and turn it into a simple animation.
Such a brilliant idea.
4. Juanjo Surace — On Character
Another of my favourite artists on the Ruzyně wall was Juanjo Surace.
From the very beginning I felt a real connection with him—and with his wife, who was helping him paint. I think that’s partly because Juanjo comes from an animation background, which naturally shares a lot with illustration and comics.
If you look at his section of the wall, something extraordinary is happening.
A gigantic white figure wearing a tiny hat has fallen with such force that it seems to have warped the perspective of the surrounding streets.
If you really look at it, you can almost hear the impact.
Watching from all around is a crowd of strange, slightly unsettling little creatures: people whose heads are nothing but oversized noses or mouths, a dog that’s essentially just a walking set of jaws. Many of them carry symbols associated with Catholicism—crosses, cassocks, and other religious references.
The longer you spend with the mural, the more you realise that although Juanjo’s work initially resembles charming illustrations, beneath the surface it’s actually an incredibly sharp and thoughtful critique of society.
Of course, these weren’t the only artists I enjoyed meeting.
There were countless conversations on the scorching pavement, or evenings spent relaxing together on deck chairs as trams rattled past.
I’m carrying all of those moments with me.
I truly have a beautiful job, and I’m endlessly grateful for the people it allows me to meet.
And one last thing.
If you’ve ever wondered where the pose I strike in front of all my finished murals—with my legs apart and both thumbs up—comes from, I borrowed it from the Czech street artist Pasta.
Many years ago, when I was first discovering street art, I saw a photograph of him standing exactly like that in front of one of his pieces. Behind him was the phrase:
„Smarter every day.“
I don’t think Pasta still uses that pose anymore.
But maybe I can.
Because that’s exactly what I’m trying to be—just a little bit smarter every day.
And this summer, I truly feel like I learned an enormous amount.
Have a wonderful summer, friends!
T_B
