Interview and Style

How did you begin in the tattoo world? How did you pick up the skills?

I arrived in the world of tattooing purely by passion. I never actually had the goal to become a tattoo artist or to become well known in the world of tattooing. I was doing my music studies in London at the time and I started to have a lot of friends asking me to give it a go because I was constantly drawing during my classes. My mum is a painter and art teacher so I grew up with pencils and brushes in my hands and I had the chance to have access to studying art due to  her guiding me with it. But my goal was to become a session musician, so during my studies I just started tattooing purely because I enjoyed it and purely because I love the craft and art of tattooing. I started doing small tattoos, letterings, small hearts or infinity signs and from that I just followed where tattooing was taking me. I opened my first private shop in a medical treatment room in London Chiswick, a few months later its started growing. Later I moved back to France and this is where I started to explore my own approach and creating my own techniques that wasn’t really used before in black and grey realism, mixing greyish and grey colours and from there it kind of got out of hand and my name started to go international. I’m really thankful today for what tattooing gave me and I’m happy to have amazing team of artists and 2 shops in both of my favourite places, France and England. 

How do you progress from your initial concepts to the final one? Tell me how things are made. 

It really depends on what I’m doing, if I’m taking a client’s idea, I generally just ask for a theme in 3 or 4 words and from there I find references and build up my visuals from the portrait that I find. When making my own wannados, at the moment I’m exploring is the concept of organic tattoo. Elements and textures that we can find in nature and create a new flow on the body through this texture. Then I mix it with portraiture. This is the direction that I want to take today in my work. I’m still interested in custom demands too though. We are artists but we are also tattooists which means we need to never forget that we do this for our customers first of all. 

What do you think the tattoo industry will look like in ten years? 

Its’ a tricky question! I feel today that the industry is becoming much more competitive than it was before. Its a bit of a race of who is gonna take the attention of what we could call “the industry” itself. So basically chasing likes and follower numbers on social medias. Today a big percentage of artists do tattoos for social media and not for their customers or for the love of the art. So im a bit sceptical for now about where we are going. Im not too happy about tattooing being just another product for mainstream attention. For now the world of tattooing can be compared to commercial Pop Music, while I my self I prefer Jazz or rock music created for people that are passionate about music. I wish tattooing could be more related to art and less to the idea of being popular. I hope also that tattooing can stop being related to inapropriate content. If we want it to be seen as art then we should showcase artists and not badly behaved rockstars. 

What sources do you prefer to use to advance the tattoo world? 

Tattooing is a personal journey, my thoughts and mood have a lot of influence on my work. The older I get the more I feel the need to disconnect from over socialising, to have less noise and more time for my work. The moment I feel inspired is when I have my machine in my hand without background noise. The more time I spend this way the more possibilities I’m exploring and the more I feel inspired to progress in my work. 

When you hear the word success, what comes to mind? 

To be really honest success isn’t a word that has any meaning. Success is happiness. What I mean by that is that if you are happy with what you do and if you wake up in the morning happy to enjoy the small things of life and do what you do then you are successful. The fact that influencers and bloggers keep showing that success equals money, constant growth of popularity, it is just a fake idea of what success is. We have only one life and there is no point to chase after a rabbit that you will anyway never catch because it will never be enough ( relating to the popular idea that is success) 

So yes success for me is being able to feel free, happy, and be there for the people I love; doing what I love is a bonus. The success that tattooing is bringing me, for me it simply means being able to live stress free and enjoy the small things. 

If the general idea of success remains just the idea of wealth then I do believe we are doomed on a personal level and worldwide level. 

What are the most common misconceptions and errors in the tattoo world?

That to be a successful tattoo artist you need to fit in the box that social media and the industry are making. You don’t need to be accepted by the tattoo world to be a good tattoo artist. We have tendency to forget that what we want is to make good tattoos because we love tattooing. I see young artists doing tattoos to be able to become something or someone when it should just to be able to tattoo and enjoy a good time with the customer of the day. Tattooing, like art, is a passion, a lifestyle. It’s a lifelong journey and a constant learning process. There is no achievable goal in art because the whole process is the goal from A to Z.

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3 different styles based on realism to choose from

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Créons quelque chose ensemble.

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