My Journey to Becoming a Tattoo Artist –
After 10 years building a successful design career in the U.K, I decided it was time for a change. While I enjoyed my work, I always had a feeling there was something else out there for me. I started working in design at age 19, while a lot of my friends were taking their first trips travelling the world. When I hit my ten year mark, I decided my time had come. So I handed in my notice & booked a flight. Next stop New York!
I have always had a passion for Hip Hop culture. In my younger days I spent my spare time reading graffiti books & drawing to try & replicate the styles I saw within those pages. New York was an eye opening experience for me. The music & art & the people all left me feeling very inspired & had rekindled my love of graffiti & started me thinking back towards the sketchbooks I used to love filling with art. I spent around a month in New York & Philadelphia, before moving on.
After a brief stop in Fiji, I landed in Auckland, New Zealand. Auckland proved to inspire me further. The tattoo scene there was ahead of anything I had seen in the U.K. Maori art & tattoos were everywhere I looked. Tattooing in general had a far more open feel & seemed to be far more acceptable in all kinds of employment. Even police officers would display there tattoos with rolled up sleeves. Yet to find a job & decided to spend some of my free time creating art. I bought sketchbooks, pencils, pens & paint & got to work. I had also purchased some tattoo magazines & before I knew it my love of art & new interest in tattoos became one!
I spent a year living in New Zealand, finally locating to Queenstown, where I met my now wife Melissa. With this new connection in my life I decided to cut the rest of my trip short, return home & start on a plan to move to Canada. Four long months passed & finally my work visa was approved & I made my first trip to Whistler.
Lets fast forward a little now. We moved to & from Canada & the U.K. a couple of times, but when our first daughter was born we decided to move back to Whistler & I have been based here now since 2013. Throughout the moves & new parenting, even with my many attempts at finding a tattoo apprenticeship, I still hadn’t found an opportunity to start learning to tattoo. Slowly I had started gathering health information regarding tattooing & decided to go it alone & teach myself to tattoo. This is not a recommended way to enter tattooing, but with my meticulous habit of note taking I started tattooing fruit & then myself, watching each tattoo heal, until I was happy with my technique & the healed result. I put together a portfolio of my tattoos & with each new tattoo my skills increased & interest started to build in my work.
In 2017 my portfolio was full with photos & I was ready to take the next step. After talking to Dave Petko at Black Ohm Tattoos, he invited me to help him tattoo for the ‘Trees for BC’ fundraiser, organized by Kelsey Bareham owner of The Whistler Tattoo Company. The fund raiser went really well & Dave offered me a permanent position at his studio. From there I met some of my first clients, who I still tattoo today & the past years have been a constant journey of growth for me. My style & techniques are constantly evolving. I still take notes on every tattoo & refine my process in every way to ensure I am creating the best tattoos, with the least possible damage to the skin. This is all part of my aim to provide the best possible tattoo experience. This also includes the way I approach conversations, emails, consultations & the whole tattoo design process.
These days I am loving my work more than ever. I combine my design experience with my love of drawing to create art using a mix of styles. I love to use photographic elements in collages with hand drawn elements. Design software with pens & pencils fill my drawing table where I feel I have endless ways to create art.
We now have two children at school here in Whistler. I’m incredibly lucky to wake up surrounded by my girls. I look out over mountains every day, take time to meditate every morning, then spend the rest of my day creating art for awesome people. I now have clients travelling here to get tattooed & wearing my tattoos all over the world!
Much love to all my clients past, present & future, for helping me to make my dream into a reality!
You can see my portfolio here!
Member of the Black Ohm Tattoo Collective