Even though 2022 was the official “Year of the Tiger,” Seventh Son Tattoo believed it would be a fitting homage to begin 2023 with a traditional motif as the theme for their art exhibition. From Pinky Yun to Ed Hardy, the tiger has been consistently and strongly represented in the tattoo industry. Luke Stewart, tattooist […]
Category: Painting
Hansan’s Tattoo Remakes of Famous Paintings
Hansan is a tattooist based in Seoul, South Korea. She lives with three cats which she regards as more than family; they are soul-mate creatures who provide her joy and health. And inspire her to tattoo cats, dogs, and other animals on the skins of her customers. While this is one of her primary themes, […]
Interview with Abii about Porcelain Paintings to Tattoos
While Abii earned a degree in scenography from Sangmyung University in 2011 due to her love of reading plays and visualizing theatrical sets, her student hobby was porcelain painting, which influenced her career choice (resulting in six years as a professional porcelain artist). Her interest in tattoos sprang from a desire to see her works […]
Kari Barba: The Queen of Modern Tattooing
Kari Barba has been tattooing for four decades. She was one of the few female tattooists in the 1980s and has devoted herself to promoting gender equality and advancing tattoo hygiene standards to what they are today. She is tattoo royalty and the co-owner of Outer Limits, the longest-running tattoo studio in America and the […]
Yanina Viland: Painting, Tattooing and Creating Positive Experiences
We met up with tattoo artist Yanina Viland in her new private studio in Lisbon, Portugal, located in the traditional part of the city that overlooks the Tagus river. She smiled, showing us her balcony—the outdoor space where she spends time just chilling and collecting thoughts. Her dog BB King, a friendly mutt she adopted […]
From Berlin with Love: Tattoo Flash by Brian Kelly
Prolific tattooists Ben Corday and Sailor Jerry have continued to inspire new generations—think: sailing ships, pin-up girls, skulls and hearts—all of those symbols defined the “American Old-School Tattoos.” The same icons that US-native Brian Kelly has revived on skins and in tattoo flash. “Sometimes I use liquid acrylic for the white parts of the paintings. […]
A Stranger in Town: Dark, Symbolic Compositions by Shane Pierce
Shane Pierce is an artist from Missouri (currently based in North Carolina) who describes his life and art as “nomadic”—travelling, working in different creative fields, and populating his oil paintings with skull-faced suitcase-toting wanderers ( “‘a stranger comes to town’ type of theme,” as he describes it in a fascinating interview with Beautiful Bizarre). With […]
Colorful, Grotesque Creature Mash-Ups by Tom Strom
Tom Strom is an artist based in Edinburgh, Scotland, who paints and tattoos colorful “creature mash-ups.” Among his inspirations are anime and Disney movies—the former for monster design, the latter for colorful backgrounds. He began tattooing over twenty years ago, during which time he experimented with different techniques and developed his style, which is an […]
Seungyea Park: Monsters are Everywhere
The art of Seungyea Park (aka, Spunky Zoe) is a meeting with “monstrousness”—that is, the product of our fear as it festers among us. Fear is necessary to social systems because it distinguishes the self from a monstrous Other—the enemy, the freak. “Monsters are everywhere,” Park writes, because we compulsively create them. To help herself […]
Dark Dream Characters in the Paintings of Bill Mayer
Bill Mayer is a well-known artist currently based in Decatur, Georgia, whose curious creatures have been widely featured on magazines, ads, stamps, posters, and more. Since an early age, Mayer has been attracted to things that are strange; this leaning towards oddity is evident in the selection of gouache paintings shown here, which include anthropomorphic […]
