Nathan Cole admits he used to get up to a fair bit of mischief on the Auckland back-streets, and eventually the police caught up with him.
But the outcome was not quite what he expected.
"Yea got caught tagging and the cops must've seen something in me and instead of sending me to court they sent me to Kakano," he says.
"Once I got to Kakano they literally turned my life around."
The "Kakano" Nathan is talking about is the Kakano Youth Arts Collective in West Auckland, an community group which aims to steer teens in the right direction.
Nathan is one of Kakano collective's founding members and the influence it's had on his life has been dramatic.
"I've achieved a six month foundation course and a year long certificate in design and visual arts at Unitech that was all because of Kakano," he says.
Nathan's work is now on show at the Kakano Art Exhibition at Corban Estate Art Centre, West Auckland, until this Sunday.
And he says his work is definitely a case of art imitating life.
"I just kind of make it real because my life has been wild and all over the show," Nathan says.
"So I kind of keep it like that but now it's all reigning in I try and keep the foreground nice and detailed cause I'm trying to figure out what I want to be."
One of the organiser's of Kakano, Mandy Parmore, says it was self-evident youth in West Auckland needed something to redirect their energy.
"I was constantly getting calls from youth services like child youth and families, police, alternative education providers," Mandy says.
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