ruby jae handpoke tattoo:
i am drawn to many forms of creative expression with my interest lying mainly in tattoo, watercolor, printmaking, photography, and pen, ink and pencil drawing. within each medium, i’ve tended to develop a style that’s unique to that medium. my watercolors are brightly colored and abstract, while my drawing tends to be more subdued and representational. my tattoo work is almost exclusively black and gray, focusing on flora and fauna type imagery. i am deeply interested in tattooing without a machine and i focus on hand-poke tattooing. In the last couple of years, I have been tattooing more abstract, stylized designs- this is the direction I feel most inspired to move in. i am very drawn to and inspired by the natural world, geometric designs, repetitive themes/patterning, tessellations, and negative space.
i began tattooing myself by hand, without a machine, as a teenager and continued to tattoo myself until i was in my early twenties. it was then that i began to tattoo others and got the idea to build a tattoo machine. fast forward to a couple of years later when i bought all the odds and ends necessary to work with a true tattoo machine. i didn't use my new machine right away- it took me some time to get used to the idea. when i did begin to work with it progress was good, yet there was still something missing. i always felt like i had a wild animal in my hand when i was working with the machine- it felt out of control, unpredictable, fast and crazy. it downright stressed me out sometimes. i always missed handpoke. i dreamed about doing handpoke only, but felt that there was little to no place for a strictly handpoke tattoo artist...
here i am in the present day: tattoo is my calling and handpoke is my passion. i love it and believe more than ever that it is one of my duties- my labors of love. tattooing is a meditation that brings me calm, focus, and a presence of spirit.
taking from a recent inspiration: the musician and thinker antony hegarty wrote some of the ideas below. i've added a few more ideas to the list that cycle through my mind too:
circles of light, the Arctic, old growth, water,
witches, mammals, portals,
the slavery of addiction and viral late stage capitalism,
woman power, plant medicine,
food security, healthcare, hr 875, gardens,
families treasuring their transgendered children,
feral intuition,
forests, oxygen, carbon,
patriarchal religions and heirarchies that would rather catalyze apocalypse than admit
that centuries of male domination have almost destroyed us,
a feminist revolution might save our world
i am grateful every day for the opportunity to do this work.
thank you for reading...
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