How long have you been tattooing?
I've been tattooing since 2005. Now, I think my interest in tattooing was ignited from the age of 16 when I used to hang out at Quiggins in Liverpool. Quiggins was a funky underground 4-story building full of retro second hand moth eaten shops, with tattooing and piercing on the top floor, all the goths used to hang out there. Ever since I can remember I've always painted and drawn, and was naturally drawn to the imagery used in tattooing from the 1st time I saw it.
I went to university in 2001 to study sociology and completed the degree in 2004; my main passion has always been the arts so when I left university I opened a contemporary art gallery selling glass, ceramics and paintings in order to study on the side as an artist. I ran the shop for a while but was working 24/7 and not practicing as an artist or breaking even financially. A week after I closed the gallery I got a job that I LOVED piercing In Luton market, I continued to pierce for about 18 months after that. This also re-ignited my love for tattooing that had somehow been forgotten from 3 years of university.
In 2005 I nagged and nagged my boss to let me learn tattooing, but she didn't think that my drawings were good enough and only gave in after another employee got sacked. She gave me 6-weeks to learn to tattoo and would make me go back to piercing if I couldn't do it in that time, so I worked my ass off, tattooing and practicing as much as I could under the wing of another tattoo artist, who immigrated after the 6-week apprenticeship and I was full time in the studio from there on. I moved to the studio in Peterborough soon after and really loved my time there, but was still working alone most of the week and had no one to bounce things off, I didn't really have a clue what I was doing.
Who is your favourite artist? Which artists influenced you inside and outside of tattooing?
I don't have any one person that I would credit as my inspiration but I think that I have learnt the most and been Inspired the most by Paolo Acuna, I love his tattoos and his paintings and sculptures, he was the one who pushed me to start painting again. There are so many people doing incredible work at the moment, I love realism and large Japanese work, artists such as Shige have a great influence on me, I love the depth, contrast and flow achieved in his pieces.
My influences change a lot, but at the moment outside of tattooing I'm really influenced by impressionist and post-impressionist art. I love Van Gogh and Gaussian, their colours and technique. I've been in love with renaissance art since a young age. Pop surrealism really appeals to me and I also love Crayola's and Joe Sorrens work.
How would you describe your style?
I love anything organic with a good flow I don't know how to describe my style and want to stay flexible with where I'm going so I'm trying to explore as many different approaches as possible, at present being realism, Japanese and painterly techniques and style.
I try to think of the tattoo machine as an extension of the paintbrush, Id love to achieve the depth, texture and shadings that are possible with oil paint. I aspire to the looseness and fluidity of painting in tattooing.
What's been your favourite (or one of your favourites) tattoo that you've done?
I think one of my favourite tattoos is the medusa I did recently, I loved the customers concept of having birds fighting in the hair, one with a bowlers hat he also let me go mad with the colours which was great fun, its great when people give you full trust on a piece and let you run with it.
What question do you ask yourself the most when you're planning a tattoo?
when I'm designing a tattoo I try and interact a lot with the customer and see what they would like in the tattoo and then from there I'll plan out a way of making this possible in the coolest way, A lot of the work I do is free hand, I find that this enables me to achieve a looser tattoo that fits well to the flow of the body, from here if I'm doing a realistic piece I'll stencil on the subject and then go from there, I don't do that much prep work, I tend to prefer to develop the piece as I go. My clients vary a lot in how they want the design to be, sometimes they're very definite and give me little creative space, where as other tell me to go mad and just do what I feel. I love it that no client is the same and I have such a diverse range of people to work with.
