He is happy to paint you a wardrobe

It's hard to believe, watching him paint, that John Fitzpatrick has the patience to stitch and embroider clothing.

At a recent CanvasClash event atop Whole Foods on South Street, Fitzpatrick - or John F, as he's known around town - is a blur of gangly arms and long, frantic fingers as he and two fellow painters hit the mats fast.

While break-dancers break and DJs spin, the painters collaborate on one green-themed painting. But Fitzpatrick, 22, seems the most happily focused, spreading his improvised ideas onto canvas and then filling his thick black lines with large flat planes of color to create smiling faces that, while sometimes hidden, still stand out.

"No matter what I do - whether it's painting into canvas or clothing - I always manage to place a face," says Fitzpatrick. "The faces make my lines so much easier to relate to. They're inviting, like any friendly face."

The graffiti-like faces and figures also speckle his Johnfdesigns brand of T-shirts, painted-on suit jackets, hats, sweatpants and such. They are serene and silly, spiritual in a nondenominational manner. (His Web site, www.johnfdesigns.com, is subtitled "the design of well-being.")

At his home/studio digs at Broad and Reed, Fitzpatrick carefully dots trucker caps with fake emeralds and stitches bright painted faces, ripped from another cloth. He'll continue throughout the day, cutting holes into button-down shirts and replacing them with graphic underlays.

"In a lot of ways, I'm experimenting with traditional fashion-industry techniques, as well as my own goofy stuff," says Fitzpatrick.

His urban couture/skateboard-chic pieces range from $35 for single silk-screen print shirts to more than $200 for a hand-stitched suit jacket. He's also making "Scoods" and "Scoodies" - sweatshirts with hoods and scarves attached to them, done in everything from thick brocaded wool-based fabric and fur to cotton, khaki and designer silk. They'll sell for $45 up.

And yet clothing is only one of his pursuits. When he's not studying animation at the Art Institute of Philadelphia or skateboarding, Fitzpatrick may be splattering murals onto the walls of clubs and coffee houses such as Marmont and LaVa or taking part in live-action painting at World Cafe Live. He may do emcee work for turntable-toting pals under his hip-hop moniker, Discipline. He may paint live models before having them serve champagne and PopRocks at a kamikaze trunk show.

"He's an interesting kid with a tremendous amount of creative energy," says Nicole Porter Willcox, singer with the electro-pop trio the Jill Rabbits and painter for her own Creative Karat Designs. "We painted together live the first time we ever met."

Fitzpatrick started making skateboard apparel in 2000. His trucker hats, decorated with everything from gems to homemade decals to fabric designs, sold on the boardwalks of Wildwood, N.J.

"I made things pleasing to the eye and the soul - nothing tacky or hacky," he says, laughing.

The applique-heavy hats were an early model for the current Johnfdesigns catalog of shirts, scarves and made-to-order jackets, as everything has a patchwork feel to it. He took his inspiration from graffiti artist Dalek, New Yorker illustrator Dewey Saunders, and psychedelic Pop painters Peter Max and M.C. Escher.

At first, Fitzpatrick's one-of-a-kind shirts were part of his work with Freshout Media, a local PR firm that specializes in community-first events. Besides having Fitzpatrick sell his wares at Freshout events at the M-Room, The Khyber, World Cafe Live and more, the company commissioned special shirts from him.

"John's pleasant, extremely multitalented and keeps expanding his skill set," says Navid Safabakhsh, executive director of Freshout Media. "I love his illustrative work; that use of clean, thick, and curvaceous lines creates an awesome flow to his pieces."

It's not unusual for Fitzpatrick to paint a masklike visage directly on a Hugo Boss suit jacket. Or to weave his designs into the back of a gray Armani sports jacket. "The faces open you up to experience," he says. "They're travel guides through the flow of what I do."

Fitzpatrick's shiny, happy people represent a spiritual vibe the Doylestown native learned from his parents, John and Jan Fitzpatrick. His mother operates a holistic center in Doylestown - Integrative Vibrations - and owns a Vibrational Integration Bio-photonic Energizer, a machine meant to balance and energize cells, chakras and meridians while reducing stress.

I grew up with that," says Fitzpatrick of the V.I.B.E machine that resided in his home. "It helps your body bio-magnetic field and anti-aging abilities."

Fitzpatrick inherited a spiritual bent, and he creates daily nondenominational mantras for himself as a form of discipline and spiritual vitality. He sees his clothing as a healing tool that can create an overall well-being.

Now, Fitzpatrick is gearing up for a fall collection of button-down shirts for men and women, ripped and restitched with funky buttons and funkier graffiti faces and hand-embroidered suits with bolts of his own fabrics blasted onto them.

"It's totally rags to riches and back again," Fitzpatrick says of his look.

Along with making a name for his clothing and his paintings, Fitzpatrick's next big goal is to help others develop their own vision and their own clothing.

"That's the true notion of what couture really is, right?" he said. "Something where you're part of the vision."