7700 • • S SKKIINN D DEEEEPP M MAAGGAAZZIINNEE
OUTLINES-A-GO-GO
You can do so much with animal designs you
can never really run out. As for them being
pulled apart, it’s nothing to do with wish-
ing harm on animals, it just looks cool, and
I’ve always liked drawing things full of other
weird things. I first saw dissected things on
a few huge pieces of wall art in some squat
venues in Germany on tour, and then stum-
bled across a few tattoo artists doing similar
things with hands and faces and other objects
and it looked amazing. I thought it’d look cool
if I sliced up some animals and filled them
with beans and a bit of cheese now and then.
I can see many of your tattoos working
as motifs for street wear i.e. t-shirts,
skateboards, would you ever consider
widening your practice to make designs/
illustrations for fashion?Yes I’d definitely love to do more stuff like that. I’ve recently done a
run of t-shirts that have turned out really well and I have a few dif-
ferent projects in the pipeline. I’ve always dreamed of doing some
skateboards, some of my earliest inspirations to draw came from the
artwork I saw on skateboards.
What does tattooing mean to you?
Tattooing is still pretty new to me in the grand scheme of things but
I feel so lucky to have been granted the opportunity to survive creat-
ing art. There’s not really much money going round in the DIY punk
scene so the past fifteen years has been a struggle. I’m slowly start-
ing to remember what it’s like to not feel constantly worried, on edge,
angry and guilty for being yourself, and I owe a lot of that to tattooing
and the people who have come into my life because of that. Obviously
there are parts of the industry, as with any sort of scene or subculture
that I don’t like. But in the majority of my experiences so far I have
found tattooing to have a kind and supportive community where you
can be yourself and work hard doing something you love. Hopefully
I’ll be sticking around in it for a while.