I am originally from Raton, New Mexico and now live and tattoo in Denver, Colorado,
My tattoo journey started in 2007. I grew up loving art and sketching on all my friends notebooks, walls and my desks in school. I always knew I wanted to be an artist, the challenge was going to be how to do it for a living. I moved to Denver from New Mexico in 1997 to go to The Art Institute. I did graphic and web design and was really unhappy. I was talking to my wife about how frustrated I was that I never got into tattooing earlier in life. I went to bed that night feeling discouraged. The next day my wife called all the shops in town until one agreed to talk to me about an apprenticeship. That’s how it all started for me. It was a rough start for me with my 9-5 job, a family and an apprenticeship.
My apprenticeship basically consisted of learning how to tattoo safely and quickly.I never got a chance to really be mentored by one tattoo artist but from the time I was very young I was surrounded by art. I learned a lot from my brother Eric and also had great art teachers.
I love realism but with an artistic and creative style to it. Surrealistic artists have influenced me my entire life. Portrait work is what I like the most. I like the challenge of trying to capture the likeness, character and emotion of a person. I do lots of watercolor and painted effects in my tattoos to give my tattoos a painted portrait look which comes from my fine art style. I like both Black & Grey and Color equally, I let the subject matter and mood of the piece determine what I use.
My biggest tattoo influences as of now are Florian Karg, Rich Pineda and Victor Chill. It’s a combination of styles and skills from these 3 artist that best describe where I want to go with my tattooing. However, I am becoming more inspired by every new artist I meet. Everything inspires me, other people’s art, music, stories, lives etc… What keeps me driven is to always push my abilities and always test myself artistically. What keeps me passionate about art, my family! Showing them that you can follow your dreams and do what you love!
I am focusing mainly on portraits. I love doing movie and book themed tattoos the most, not only the character portraits but incorporating other elements of the story in the tattoo as well. I think all tattoos should tell a story and good stories make good tattoos!