I create paintings together with my friend, artist Radim Kašpárek. This collaboration fulfills me and brings me much more joy than working alone. We have been developing our unique method of painting for several years. We are both fascinated by the process and working together encourages us to constantly experiment.
"A cooperation is always very interesting when it comes to the connection of two energies or their mutual blending. In this case, a creative duo of Ondřej "Ondrash" Konupčík and Radim Kašpárek is very strong. Together, they were able not only to refine the know-how of their unique painting techniques, but also to experiment further with the adjustment and atypical shapes of their canvases. The paintings are dominated by precise work with the colour flow, knowledge of the medium and controlled freedom of the result, but chance also plays a fun role here. In addition, sometimes even psychedelic colour and freedom of shape lends the final images a perfectly illusory frontier of the perception of their images, when it can be similar to a long look at the clouds for viewers. The eyes try to guess the shapes, surmise… With many ideas, the game begins."
Petr Kunčík, a painter
My tattoo beginnings were not very different from the experience of most other artists. My first tattoo attempts were made on my friends volunteers. When I became a little more confident, I tattooed at music festivals with a group of people from the Přerov tattoo magazine. After rich, yet not always pleasant experiences, I soon realized this is not the route I want to go. I didn't enjoy tattooing the same motifs indefinitely, on the contrary, I wanted to bring something of my own to tattoos and break down the idea of what a tattoo "should" look like.
Therefore, as one of the few first tattoo artists in the Czech Republic, I started to create my own motifs instead of having a catalogue that I would present to the customers. I was inspired by watercolour paintings, which are characterized by loose lines and a varied palette of colours. Back then, when monochrome motifs with typically sharp lines were extremely popular, I often had trouble finding clients who were willing to let me try my ideas on their skin. On the other hand, my work was easy to distinguish from others, and the fact that it did not fit into then trends made it difficult to get overlooked.
Thanks to that, I managed to attract one of the tattoo parlours in New Zealand, from where I received invitations for an internship. I was starting from scratch, but thanks to the beauty of traditional tattoos and the rituals associated with the creative process, I once again realized that classical tattoos, as I know them from Europe, are empty and too impersonal for me. In addition to the refined technique, I returned with a lot of experience, which completely changed my view how to approach my client and what kind of feeling I want to take from the tattoo process myself.
Although, beginning again was difficult after returning, thanks to the possibility to show my work via social networks, I gradually gained more customers not only from the Czech Republic, but mainly from abroad. When the well-known server Buzzfeed unexpectedly ranked me among the world's best tattooers in 2013, clients from all over the world who were interested in my tattoos began to call me. Since then, I haven’t had a break and instead of the classic waiting list, I now need to carefully choose every client I work with as it is timely and mentally impossible for me to accept everyone.
Most of my motivation comes with my clients and their individual life stories and experiences that motivate me to constantly move forward, whether it includes the way of processing themes, working with colours or discovering new techniques. Painting, which I have been focusing on more intensively in recent years, also has had a great influence on how I create tattoos. Gradually, I gave up watercolour motifs and naturally switched to abstraction – I enjoy to create movement and unfinishedness in my motifs rather than perfectly accurate drawing and pre-defined rules. Abstract work provides much greater creative possibilities, I can be spontaneous in adding elements that just feel in the right place and at the same time leave space for further story development…
