However, in 2009, when he hit rock bottom, his friend George took him to visit an exhibition of stencil art in Bristol.
Realizing how he'd thrown his life away, he started cutting stencils with a rusty blade, a magazine cover and a stolen can of high-pressure spray paint.
However, he still hadn't faced his addiction at that point and he finally hit rock bottom when he was homeless and sleeping on the roof of an abandoned hotel.
Standing atop the ledge of that roof, he was debating whether he should jump and join his lost friends, but he decided to do the hardest thing: to prove that he could make it in the art game and show that, even though he grew up in a poor estate, he was not a loser like he'd been raised to believe.
He started to attend counseling and group meetings and finally turned his life around.
Pursuing art, with time, not only his equipment, but also his skills improved, he evolved his own style and technique.
JPS has an unique style, ranging from pop culture and lifelike horror movie characters over funny wordplay and perfect placement to massive dinosaurs and tiny micro stencils. His artworks can be found in countries across the globe, such as Norway, Spain, the United States of America and Germany, where he is now located.
"If I’m honest, my mental health hasn’t been good the past couple of months, corona laws in Bavaria have been very strict throughout the pandemic and are still now, combined with winter weather making it difficult to paint and the isolation of living so far in the countryside, I just struggle on through in hopes of better days ahead."
"I view my works in different sections: there’s the horror stuff, which is all about placement and terrorizing people, there’s the object intervention stuff inspired by street items or fittings and there’s the micro stuff and puns, I enjoy bouncing between these and rarely do political stuff, I think my street art should inspire others and make people smile. Most political works have a very short lifespan; they may get you a brief amount of attention but you find they are useless to share a year later."
"The 'insert coin to continue' phrase on my Instagram profile relates to the war against the collective of artists that form the brand known as Banksy, it’s all one big fraud and they blackball anyone they see as a threat, which unfortunately I’m one of. Their media control is astonishing and if anyone's interested in why I think it’s a fraud, Google JPS burst balloon on Banksy, to this day I’m still not proven wrong. But I lost this battle and felt it’s kind of game over for my career. My outlook on art and life is art saved me from addiction and I find no greater happiness in painting works that the world enjoys."
"The 'insert coin to continue' phrase on my Instagram profile relates to the war against the collective of artists that form the brand known as Banksy, it’s all one big fraud and they blackball anyone they see as a threat, which unfortunately I’m one of. Their media control is astonishing and if anyone's interested in why I think it’s a fraud, Google JPS burst balloon on Banksy, to this day I’m still not proven wrong. But I lost this battle and felt it’s kind of game over for my career. My outlook on art and life is art saved me from addiction and I find no greater happiness in painting works that the world enjoys."
"I’ve lost so many friends through drugs, suicide, and a few other causes that I struggle to list them all, I guess you become numb to it over time and I try not to think back at things too much, I have paid tribute to a few via my work and have a few others I want to pay tribute to in this way, I think growing up on a rough estate we were labelled from birth and it’s like that was meant to be our fates, I’m hoping to prove that wrong one day and get some of their stories told."
"My advice to anyone starting out is start simple and also paint things that you want to and can relate to personally, the stuff the media proclaims is cool will only be used to promote a certain brand. It’s stale in my eyes. The breaking the law part is always nerve-wracking, I just had nothing to lose when I started out."
