For inspiration, let us look to my tattoo artist’s story.
At eighteen—not yet tattooed himself—he walked into a tattoo shop in the Florida town where he grew up and said, “I want a job. I want to be a tattoo artist.” The shop, a bristly biker scene, wasn’t receptive. The owner told him to get the hell out of the shop.
Undeterred, he compiled his illustrations into a humble portfolio and returned two weeks later. He again asked for a job. He got a two-year unpaid apprenticeship. So, he learned what he could while taking the owner’s car for oil changes and fast-food runs to fuel the artists’ late night sessions. Then, one day, the apprenticeship was over. He got the job.
“What were those first years like?” I asked, tattoo half-inked on my forearm yesterday.
“Insane,” he said, chuckling. “But I knew I had to get as many reps as I could. I would have done anything for that work. I loved it.”
Four years later, a friend called him with a job offer. He sold everything, moved to Manhattan, and earned a clientele referral by referral. After ten years in New York, he moved to Asheville with his hair stylist wife and they’ve since opened their own concept together. In a one-hundred-year-old neighborhood, in stone-brick building, she does hair upstairs and he tattoos downstairs in the old garage. His shop is mostly windows. Natural light reigns. Hanging plants drop from the corners. His now expansive portfolio hangs on the walls. It’s not a biker scene; it’s his story.
I paid him for the work, left the shop, and drove home impressed, thinking, if we can just trust in the right work and lose ourselves inside its repetition, the rest works itself out… wherever inspiration leads us.
To livin’ a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
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