ELEVEN-ELEVEN

Okay here I go… I can talk yer ass off so just tell me to shut the hell up if I get outta hand... It's funny but tattooing was never even a thought in my head as to being an art-form before I started.. I was ignorant to it as was most of the world 19 years ago when I fell into to the business by accident.. I was in music most of my life up until the end of my most successful band in the early 90's called Dirty White Boy on Polygram Records with me and Earl Slick and a two others. We traveled the world together and it was my dream come true that eventually crashed, as most long shot projects do...

I got lucky, not two weeks after that career ended, I received a call from a local tattoo shop owner who had seen my drawings. He asked if I'd be into learning to tattoo under him.. I did, and all I had to do in trade for training was draw a set of 10 sheets of tattoo flash designs. That's where I started.. The apprenticeship didn't last more than two months as he was kinda (well let's just say he disappeared for about a year) Yay!!!! Me and my other newbie tattoo artist friend, Shannon O Sullivan had a shop of our own for a year!!!!!! I took to it fast and became fascinated by the works of Guy Aitchison, Paul Booth, Mario Barth, etc.. I made it my new outlet for my art and had a strong following right away... I was a lucky bastard in this business and it wasn't that easy to get into back then... I'm still just as lucky now.. I've got a huge clientele base that keeps me going 7 days a week.. I'm nuckin futts I know! I love to work... LOVE art.. looking at it, watching others do it and grabbing techniques from them. I have no fear. I'll do anything no matter how impossible it may seem to others. I say "Hell yeah my friend, sit down and let me get out my sharpie" "I'll show you right now what can be done to cover up that big black tribal armband" ...!!! Stick with me, I'll have you farting thru silk!!! ". Of course I never say that to the girls.!!! I have to get to know them before I let them see my true side. Don't wanna scare off new clients!!! oh and pardon my typos here,, Im smoking and hitting a 16 oz energy drink, UGH. Okay, so where was I ?

So let's talk about art. Eh, I don't know. I think it's an addiction of mine. I can't go a day without creating something that makes me laugh.. or at least puts a sneaky grin on my face. When I'm drawing, painting, whatever... it feels like I'm sneaking away from a world outside and painting pics of how I see the world or would like it to be. I have a house with an art studio that looks like the caboose in the Wild Wild West TV series way back when. Kinda Victorian, kinda bordello, kinda old wood sailing vessel, all put together so I can live in my own private Disneyland. Yeah, I do leave the house but it's all just so I can come back and escape into my head away from all the crowds trying to manipulate their way onto the freeway or into the market parking lot. This is Los Angeles and we have too many of us here!! It sucks! So I paint to forget.. I get my ideas from out there tho, out there in the hellish city.. I have peace in my studio. Music crankin and a pack of Camels and a bottle of cab from Napa. That's how I like to work.. My ideas are strange to most and I guess kinda un-sellable or not very popular. But that's okay cuz the one person that get's it is usually someone i'd like to be friends with ya know? I consider my work surrealistically campy. Humor is a must in my life. Always has been. I need to be able to look at my work when it's done and laugh or I'm taking myself to seriously, not Good cuz I'm really really hard on myself in most aspects of life. I don't think I'm a great artist by any means. I'm a combat painter, I do it cuz I need to stay sane and alive. I don't enjoy the process mostly. A really bad back has seen to that but I keep going. It's the end result that's my reward even if it winds up in the drawings drawer or the garage can!!

As far as tattooing, I think the same way but obviously have to be more commercial in my thinking sometimes. Sometimes not though!! When I get just the right client that likes my art and lets me go off on their preferably (by me), vague ideas. I say vague cuz I just need a direction they want to point me in and I'm off and designing. So much fun when they trust me and I'm so lucky to have so many that do!!!!! My job is fun 95% of the time and wow, how happy am I? VERY! I've got a new energy at 19 years of tattooing that I hadn't had in nearly 10. So much new talent in the business that smokes me! I like that cuz they don't know it but they're teaching me new tricks all the time and that trickles into my paintings and drawings. I mean hey man, the Beatles were influenced by Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix by the great blues players, so why can't I be influenced by a new kid just out of art school who's been tattooing for two years and does shit I've never thought possible? Hell yeah!!! I love the new popularity of tattooing and all the amazing talent out there that's inspiring me to at least try to be good at my job!!!! I'm no "great" in the business and I know that but I work every day doing art and that makes me a very very happy man indeedie!!!!! So in the words of Pablo Picasso "learn the rules then you can break 'em”. I say break 'em, bend ‘em, twist 'em and say to Hell with 'em.. I paint what I want and I tattoo the best I can. yee haw!!! Thanks for letting me talk about myself, that's fun!!!! He heh!! Kirk out.