We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Twee Muizen (Cris and Denís) Artistic couple a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Twee Muizen (Cris and Denís) , appreciate you joining us today. How do you think about vacations as a business owner? Do you take them and if so, how? If you don’t, why not?

We live in Barcelona, but we are from Galicia, from the countryside. So, most of the time been in a big city and missing our family and the quiet live in the countryside make us take our holly days in Galicia. Also we have to travel a lot for work, most of the time for our mural art projects, we love this travels, and for us is like vacations because we enjoy going abroad and paint in other cities and also know about other cultures, sometimes is strange if we travel to other countries and we don’t paint.

Twee Muizen (Cris and Denís) , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

We are two in this project, Denis studied fine and arts an Cris fashion design, Twee Muizen is half paint and half textil. We start in Amsterdam in 2010, because of that our name (two mousses) The first piece we made as a collaboration was a character that Denis use to paint, Cris bring it to 3D with her sewing machine, our friends and family encourage us to make more, so we start with the manufactured and design of more of this characters just for fun, and with the time commissions, exhibitions, travels and making money :)
We didn’t expect that this would be our professional future, we would have chosen another name since in Spain nobody knows how to pronounce it and it was the worse idea for marketing since nobody can remember it, but it is what it is.
Since then we continue doing what we love most, representing this surrealistic characters in many ways and through different techniques such us embroidery masks, art toys, illustrations, paintings and mural art.
Every day in our studio is different, we can be here working in a comisión piece, or doing an illustration for a newspaper or book, or just making our own pieces that later we always try to exhibit in some place.
Our studio is open to the public, we have a small shop in the entrance where everybody is welcome to come and say hi, and maybe shop, most of the time we are here working, so if the blind of the studio is close is because we are working out of Barcelona in some mural or exhibition.
We think that every step we make with our project was really organic, we know that we are privileged because is not easy having fun most of the time with your work, and this is our feelings, of course there are difficult moments but they are worth it when you do what you love.

Have you ever had to pivot?

As we mentioned before, our steps in this creative project have been really organic and with no goals in our mind. But we think that one big step in our career was rent a place and stablished our studio and gallery in Barcelona. We use to work at home, in the living room, most of the times everything look a mess, Denis with his canvas and paints and Cris with her sewing machine and fabrics, on that time we use to exhibit our pieces in bars and small shops, and we use to sell through our shop online. We realized that we need more space for doing our work, with some saves and family support we found a place in the city center in Barcelona, the rent was cheap but we have to rebuild in our own and with the help of some good friends.
We are here already seven years, and we know that this was a big step for us, we have a lot of space, we have the opportunity to meet our clients, we make new clients and friends and we meet a lot of interesting people with good stories from everywhere.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

We think that instagram, the true is that most of the time denis is painting and Cris sewing, so, we have to say that we are not really good in selling, or marketing etc because we do not enjoy that tasks, we know that we have to do it, so the easy way for us is instagram. We use instagram as our portfolio, every new work we posted, no matter if we are going to have likes, comments or wherever, we post it and is a good calendar for us, is a good portfolio and we think that for companies and clients is also a easy way to check our work.
Our first exhibition in a small gallery in Barcelona was through instagram in 2013, we didn’t even know how they find us, but this exhibition was the reason for us to move to Barcelona, and here we are.

Contact Info:

• Website: Tweemuizen.com
• Instagram: @tweemuizen

Image Credits
I have the rights of all the pictures.