Welcome!
Thank you so much for your interest in my art!
This website is a place where you can check out available flash pieces, browse my portfolio of completed works, get details about upcoming events, and more.
For more about my art style and approach to tattooing, keep reading below.
My Art Style
For a long time, I felt like my art style was very disparate and all over the place (just like me!). I’ve always loved hopping from one medium to another and trying different techniques in each one.
Over time, I’ve found that most of my work shares a few common threads:
Bright, saturated colors
Fun lighting effects, including colorful backlighting, glitter, and highlights
Varied line weight, usually with bold outlines
A mixture of cartoonish and color realism rendering styles
I like to call my style neopop.
This style lends itself well to tattoo designs, where good contrast is important above all else in creating a piece that reads well, has good longevity, and looks beautiful in any skintone.
Keeping good tattoo design principles and things that bring me joy top of mind has influenced my art style, which in turn influences how I tattoo.
Neo-: Using newer techniques, color combinations, and updated visuals, while still paying mind to the medium’s origins and traditions
-pop: Both borrowing subject matter from popular media, and stylistically from Americana pop art. Familiar subject matter that’s brighter, shinier, more colorful, and often larger-than-life in scale than its original counterpart.
Why tattooing?
Working one-on-one with clients brings me joy.
Working in collaboration with another person to help make our shared vision come to life in a beautiful way is one of my favorite ways to create art. Luckily, that’s something that works really well in the medium of tattooing.
I love making custom pieces for clients who trust me with their vision. Being able to be a part of such a meaningful moment in people’s lives, and getting to provide creative input in the process, is truly an honor.
I also love creating ready-to-tattoo flash pieces and working with people who my art speaks to enough to have it etched into their body forever. It’s difficult for me as an artist to imagine a higher honor than this, and I am endlessly thankful that I get to make my living this way.
I have spent the entirety of my working life in the service industry. This has taught me the value and immense joy that come from successful customer interactions.
The challenges I have faced within the service industry were mostly due to feeling unable to be authentic with people who I am supposed to be connecting with. Having to put on a persona in order to sell something I didn’t connect with on behalf of somebody else in environments that did not make me happy (to put it very mildly) left me feeling drained more often than not.
I am thrilled to say that this is no longer the case for me. I now work in a space where my individuality is celebrated, under a shop owner who strongly encourages self-care, with clients who believe in me enough to give me creative freedom with pieces they’ll carry for the rest of their lives.
Being able to work in a space where I feel free to be authentic in my expression allows me to create art that truly comes from the heart. Being able to share the gift of authentic art with other people is one of the greatest sources of joy in my life.
The medium of tattooing meshes well with my brain.
Meticulously building an image that mirrors the vision I have for it in my head is my favorite way to create art. Tattooing is a medium that not only works perfectly with the style of art that I like to create, but also with the ways in which I like to physically create it.
I tend to be a literal-minded person, and tattooing is a very literal medium. It’s also a medium that prioritizes precision and control. I’ve always gravitated toward mediums and styles that fit this description, including sewing and embroidery.
During a tattoo, every bit of pigment that ends up in a client’s skin is put there intentionally. The chaos and abstraction that tend to come with other media, such as watercolor and gouache, do not come as naturally to me as styles and mediums that favor precision and intentionality.
I also like the limitations that are built into the medium of tattooing. The size and scope of any given piece are only as big as the area you have to work with, and those are further constrained by a client’s preferences and pain tolerance. As an artist, I tend to get carried away with the endless possibilities of any given project; working within a medium that inherently limits the scale and complexity of an idea keeps me grounded and allows me to complete more projects.
And like all other forms of art, tattooing is a process of constant problem-solving. At any given time, I’m making quick decisions about how to best work my client’s skin, what my order of operations should be in order to best preserve the work I’ve already done within the session, when to make color switches to maximize our time and create clean gradients, all while doing everything I can to ensure my client is as comfortable as possible. There’s a lot going on, and that’s the space in which I thrive.
Tattooing aligns with my own deeply-held values.
Getting a tattoo is, more often than not, a celebration of individual expression and bodily autonomy, both of which are concepts that have guided my own ethos and career path.
Working and learning in environments that discourage self-expression has always felt extremely stifling to me. I have never found myself distracted enough by another person’s aesthetic choices to the point of being unable to focus on my own work, nor do I typically find myself doubting someone else’s abilities or character because of how they choose to decorate their own body.
I continue to be baffled by the idea that altering one’s own physical appearance means that a person is somehow less qualified or competent in their chosen career; it’s a sincerely-held belief that so many people hold that has never made any sense to me, and an idea that I disagree with ever more vehemently as I venture further into my own career.
A large portion of my clientele hold traditional office jobs. I have tattooed lawyers, academics (including teachers and college professors), engineers, and tech developers. I also tattoo people on less conventional life paths, including other artists, beauticians, service workers, and entrepreneurs. I continue to be blown away by my clients’ passion, ambition, and ingenuity all the time.
As all too many people know - especially those with marginalized identities - we live in a world that often does not believe us about our experiences with our own bodies, does not trust us to make our own decisions about what is best for our bodies, and often seeks to deny us the ability to exercise any control over our bodies (via both legislation and more direct forms of violence).
Tattoos can allow us to exercise visible control over our own bodies in a world that often seeks to strip us of that power.