It started when I was about 14. I was up to no good with my mates, writing our names with markers. One day I discovered Graphotism magazine in a little shop in Dublin city centre. That was when I discovered there was a graffiti world. I started buying paint from car shops.

I’ve worked various jobs: kitchen porter, commis chef. I went to art college, and then I worked in a shop. I got little commissions here and there, sign-writing jobs. After a while, I was lucky enough to be able to be an artist full-time.

When you’re 17, 18, travelling a lot, you think you can’t wait to get the f*** out of Ireland. I was going to go to Australia. But I couldn’t get the money to do it. I was travelling around Europe, and the more I travelled, the more I realised how much I liked Dublin. How much I missed it.

So I started writing positive little messages to the city, like “Maser loves you”. A lot of street artists’ work focuses on the negative. I don’t want to do that – it’s us on the ground level who have to see it every day. I use rounded, inviting type fonts. I started writing hopeful messages; things like “Urban Achievers” instead of “Underachievers”.

I’ve studied design and typography, and I use it in my work. I use fonts from Dublin signs from the 1930s to the 1950s. It’s a homage to people like the sign writer Kevin Freeney who back in the 1930s rambled through Dublin’s streets with a pushcart carrying his paints and brushes.

Painting around the city, I’d meet a lot of homeless people. There’s nothing for them to do, so they’d hang out with me. Chatting away to them, getting to know their stories, I got to realise that they’re just like us. That’s where the name They are Us came from.

I thought it’d be nice if I could do something for these lads. I thought, if we do an exhibition we could generate money and then donate it. I was listening to a lot of Damien Dempsey’s music at the time. His lyrics address Dublin and social issues, but in a positive way. Through a friend of a friend, I managed to get him to meet me in a pub. I told him I had this idea for a project: him writing the messages, and me painting them. He got all excited.

We met with the Dublin Simon Community, a charity that looks after the homeless. They told us they really needed a medical van. They told us it would cost 30 grand! But it would be fully equipped, running on the road for two years. Then it just needs topping up. So that was the goal.

With a lot of charities, if you want to raise €30,000, they don’t tell you that €15,000 of it will go on expenses or admin. Not with the Simon Community. If someone went in and bought a screen print for €50, every euro goes into it.

People donated gallery space, lights. We held an exhibition from 15 to 17 October selling screen prints of my work for about €50, and auctioned off a collection of larger works. The most expensive one went for about €3,000. Amazingly, we’re on course to reach our goal. Soon, we’ll just give them a cheque.

What have I learned? You can’t expect work to come to you. I wanted to emigrate, but I couldn’t. I stayed here and stuck with it, and it was lucky that I did. You’ve got to get involved, live it. Work harder. Don’t listen to people. If you start listening to what people are saying, it’ll slow you down. If you start taking on board all the negative things that people say – and the positive – it’ll drag you down and make you stop. There are a lot of people with opinions. But don’t listen.

Maser was talking to Naomi O’Leary.

For more information visit They are Us.