Men Scryfa, a standing stone on the Penwith Peninsula in Kernow (Cornwall), UK - 35mm film photo made while finding myself upon those sacred moors in April 2022, my first time to Albion (Britain), that freaky ass green island that I have ancestry from. I feel a similar deep time mystery steeped into these stones, a weird soulful buzzing of reality, as I do in the craft of tattoo - and so I open with this image as a grounding remembrance tether of why we might even approach ink and skin as craft and ritual, as laughter and surrender of a sort, to an acknowledged temporality within a paradoxical echoing permanent home, the spiritual and the tangible in unity and inseparable, beckoning us into bone and planet and innate belonging - nothing to prove, wholeness our inherent inheritance, right here & now.

Freehand tattooing is bizarre and beloved to me; at this point, 90% of all the tattoos I make are freehand - exceptions are made if imagery is new to me or the placement is particularly sensitive, like the neck. Otherwise, all of my work is drawn onto the body with pens specifically designed to draw on the skin for tattooing. Sometimes I create a stencil paint, like the dotwork river back piece, and paint the flow onto the body, following the natural shape of muscle and bone.

I only tattoo my own artwork, and I have tattooed text only once and intend never to again. This is to protect both my own conscience and integrity, as well as my client - you don’t want me to tattoo imagery that I am not 100% confident of visually articulating well.

Freehand tattoos are not for everyone; I love working with people and their seed visions - the inherently collaborative nature of freehand work is one of my favorite particularities of the process - however, you cannot see your design until we are in person and working together to bring your idea to life in the mirror. As I draw, I have people check to make sure we are on the right track as the design comes to life, and I do not tattoo until the entire piece feels like an entire embodied yes.

I think of this work as a revelation of what is already alive spiritually, waiting to emerge visually and tangibly. I never want to impose design or imagery, and every person offers a different degree of creative freedom to me based on what they are feeling called to.

Once the design feels complete, I always offer time by oneself to be with the piece - just because you like it when I’m staring over your shoulder doesn’t mean you’ll love it when you ask your heart for consent. I only see one client a day, and because of this, I also always ask that folks not make evening plans on the days they receive their tattoo: this is so that we feel no sense of rush in the designing, and so that you have a day to truly just be focused on one thing for once in your goddamn life.

This shit is bananas, and everyone who both gives and receives tattoos is a bit bananas. But it’s also magic, real magic, and real transformation. Thank you for reading, thank you for seeing, thank you for being with me here <3

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from my booking info that I send to all clients after their deposit is submitted, a lil more context about how I hold these all day sessions ~

Please enter the session centered within yourself; the freehand process requires a deep listening to one’s body and intuition. It is my job to be your tattoo midwife, but I need you to feel like you can trust your decision making and not fall into people pleasing! Especially if this is your first or second tattoo, it matters a lot to me that you have a positive experience, and in order for your tattoo dreams to come true and for you to feel settled in the design and size of your tattoo, I need your connection to your sense of consent to be strong. Also, I love enthusiasm of lots of different dreams for your tattoo, but I do need you to have a bit of distilled clarity when coming into your session; I can’t be the one to tell you what symbols and energies you want on your body until you die, I need at least a little bit of clarity from you, unless you really have an attitude of “do whatever you want.” Having a strong sense of the emotional feeling or sensation that you want the tattoo to embody will help in the process of the design; how it visually looks will be hopefully an anchor to whatever experience or inner connection you are hoping to cultivate with the piece.

I have a ritual and blessing rhythm that I always ground into before beginning the tattooing process after the drawing has been solidified. If there are any rituals, cultural practices, or specific honoring processes that you would like to include in your tattoo day, I absolutely welcome them!

Tattoos take the time they take. Even if you have traveled far, sometimes we have to make the decision to end the session before the piece is totally finished, for the sake of either or both of our endurances. Sometimes tattoos have timelines that don’t match the desires of our ego - I will always respect our commitment to a finished tattoo, but also the well being of our nervous systems. We want tattoos to be a challenge and reminder of our resilience, but not a traumatic experience.

Adding onto pieces from years prior! This is always a challenge but is an interesting collaboration to bring more story to old tattoos.