To Tattoo Artists

You’re bold to pick human beings as your canvas. You will hurt them for your art, though they come to you willingly. And, most of the time, when it’s over, you will never see the art in its original state again.

If your client is drunk, you have to turn him away. If she’s high, you have to turn her away. If he says to you he wants his ex’s name on the back of his hand, you will try to talk him out of it. She’s 19, totally sober, and she wants a Jonas Brothers tattoo on her calf, because they give her strength to walk around in the world, and you try, you really do, to say some where else, something else. She insists. This, too, is your legacy.

Sometimes they come because they have heard you are gifted and just want one of yours. Most have an idea--Bible quote, yin/yang, the last words Mom said to them before she died--but not what it will look like exactly.

By THOR (originally posted to Flickr as Nicks Gun)
[CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

 But some come with the image completely crafted--the Cleveland skyline, a Celtic knot, this sunflower from Van Gogh, two small initials. These have very specific meanings and you can see the hurt or the longing or the love as they show you what they want. They always want it somewhere they can see it, somewhere someone else will see it and ask.

The art here is not your own--yet. The artistry comes from the way you remove yourself as you paint. Your tendency is a more curved line, but this one is straight. You prefer color, but this is just an outline. You prefer the fine details at the edges, but this has no flourish, no asides to catch the eye. With every prick of the needle, you have to become a different artist, one who paints like this.

Because the sunflower isn’t really a sunflower.

Keith, newborn Whit, Rainer tattoo

An hour into it, the pain thickening, he begins to tell you the story. The baby they called “sonflower”. A year ago. First child. Something to say he is still here, that he is beautiful. But not so perfect. The sunflower of Van Gogh--messy, crowded, shocking. And so, so delicate. Each petal. You ink this into his arm for three hours. He wants it to end. He never wants it to end.