MURKADO

What was your very first tattoo and what was the inspiration behind getting it?

• My very first tattoo was a burning bridge that I got when I was 18. I knew that I really wanted one, but my family never really approved of them, so I was really hyped to do it on my own. It’s a reminder to myself to not burn bridges. At that point in my life, I was brutally honest and it sort of was a detriment to myself because I thought I was doing myself and other people favours by doing that. I realized how that affected my life and I wanted to give myself a permanent reminder.

• I also just thought it looked sick, it’s really interesting imagery and dark — I've always really been into like fantasy. I saw a picture of it on Spencer’s feed — Spencer Evans gave me this tattoo and I was like “I really want that and I feel like that like applies to me”.

I love that piece! So was it just a piece of flash that Spencer had?

• It was a design from an old signet ring and he tattooed it on one of his friends. So I asked him to do another version of it for me, in whatever way he wanted. I always try to give tattoo artists as much freedom as possible within an idea I’m sort of looking for.

How many tattoos do you currently have and which one was the most recent?

• I think I have 11 total now. I’ve gotten some shitty ones, but the most recent professional piece that I’ve gotten done was this tombstone with my best friend’s name on it. The guy who gave it to me, Tyler Bailey, is in Scotland now and he had a tattoo of a tombstone that had somebody’s name in it. So I asked him who it was for, and he said it was for his best friend Tommy, who is still alive.

• And then my friend Alex got his first tattoo from Tyler and asked him the same question individually, so we both thought it was a hilarious, dark joke to get your best friend’s name on a tombstone while we’re still alive, which is out kind of humour wrapped up into a little tattoo.

What have been some of the inspirations behind the other tattoos that you have? Do you typically have an idea in mind before reaching out to an artist?

• I think of an idea of something and talk to an artist to translate it through their style and lens with the themes that I’m after. We’ll usually workshop the piece as a collaboration, but I’ll usually give them the freedom to express themselves artistically through me.

• I’ve gotten flash pieces when I’ve really wanted a tattoo, but something didn’t work out with an artist. I remember asking somebody to do a rendition of album art for a song that was really important to me (a hand and a heart), but the artist and I didn’t really align on the design. So I ended up getting a flash piece of a dragon instead on my arm in an American traditional style. I love Japanese media and culture; I grew up on anime and manga and think that the Japanese culture has always been interesting and important to me as a person.

What is it about American traditional tattoos that you like?

• I spent a long time trying to research what kind of tattoos I wanted to get and at first, I think my ideas were very shallow. I was sort of a rebellious kid and wanted to get tattoos that looked sick to piss people off. My hometown was really small and conservative, so I wanted to differentiate myself from other people.

• As I started researching what I really wanted to represent myself, American traditional really stuck out to me. It was really dark, really heavy, it aged well, and it was a very North American way of expressing yourself. What really made me feel like I wanted to go with this style was that it felt like it was part of the culture that I grew up in and it wasn’t like I was borrowing from another culture or another place.

What were some of the more painful spots for you to get tatoooed?

• My thigh was surprisingly painful. I have a woman whose braids look like spider legs from Tyler, which was a piece of his flash that I really resonated with.

• One of the more painful areas was close to the ditch. My hand and heart tattoo snuck up on the ditch and so did my panther, so I’ve been avoiding filling in that gap for a while.

• The inner bicep was sort of another tender place, there’s a lot of nerves there and it’s not as tough as the outside. Oh and my ankle! I have a tattoo on my ankle, but I don’t really count it usually because my friend gave it to me. We were high and drunk at a friend’s place, she had a tattoo gun and was like “I could give you a tattoo!” It was such an ill conceived idea, but I was like “Let’s do it, I don’t care, it’ll be a fun story!” It looks horrible. It’s the numbers “1 4 3” and I thought it’d be simple, but it wasn’t and it hurt so bad.

Has having tattoos had any impact in your personal life, good or bad?

• I always thought that it was going to affect me negatively and when I was younger, I sort wanted that appearance superficially. I wanted to be against the grain in some way and my family was asking me why I was getting tattooed, with them not really understanding it. But everyone else has been very understanding.

• I’ve had a couple old ladies maybe be a little intrusive, but never judgmental about them. One time, I was serving a at a restaurant and a lady asked me to explain every one of my tattoos and I was like “Oh you know, they all have their own meanings, it’s kind of secretive though, it’s personal to me, it would take a while to explain all of them.”

• Tattoos have been a way of expressing my emotions that are maybe secretive or not socially acceptable, in a socially acceptable format. I’ve always been a big emotions person, and I like the idea of expressing that through a means that you have to interpret and look at. It’s a way that I wear myself on my body and helps me feel very grounded.

Do you have any favourite tattoos?

• I have a mermaid on the back of my right arm, and it’s by far my favourite tattoo. Spencer did this one and reworked an old piece of flash that he had into something very new-wave. He’s a super talented guy and did it on the spot in like 20 minutes. I showed him some designs of mermaids from an Italian tattooer, Daniele Delli Gatti, who has been very inspirational for me in finding my stylistic voice of how I wanted to get tattooed.

• If I had to pick another favourite, it would probably be the panther. This was a piece of flash from a design that didn’t work out when I was talking to Heath and Tyler in the shop one time. I had asked for a naked lady riding a panther, but didn’t really resonate with Tyler’s interpretation of it. He had just done a sheet of panthers as flash and decided to do a panther with a star, so I gave him free rain and it’s one of my favourite pieces that I have.