Mission Statement

"As long as I can remember, I’ve made art! It has been a lifelong driving force in my life. In 1993 I started tattooing, which was the very first time I really tried making any kind of commercial art. I always drew but rarely sold and thought myself above it, honestly. So tattooing was my first real attempt to sell myself and my ideas. My art, up till that point, was very much a me thing. I had a lot of problems making this transition and fought like hell against anything that didn’t seem like it was worthy of being called art. Thank God I served an apprenticeship and was surrounded by good artists who told me to settle down. “Do "the name" and shut the hell up!” Thank God, because I had bravado but no real understanding of what I was doing. So, I was saved from having too many abortions.

Eventually I started developing my own style. I gained some success and with that came greater freedoms. I was always dissatisfied with the limitations of the medium of tattooing. I didn’t, for instance like how much different my tattoos looked after they healed. So, I worked harder to perfect my craft. I went to people I respected in the business and got tattooed and asked them questions. This all started to pay off and I was introduced to the idea of layering and cover ups by Marcus Pacheco. He said he never turned down a cover up (if at all possible), because of the wealth of knowledge that these experiences provided. I adopted this philosophy and found myself more and more fascinated by the actual opacity, or lack thereof, of tattoo pigments. When I discovered oil painting I found similarities to these ideas. I also found that these things could be somewhat interconnected.

So, this was my course. I was able to find some people who gave me their trust and allowed me the space to start utilizing these ideas. The interesting by product of this interaction was I found myself on a journey with them. And as I read and studied these many different philosophies on art and layering, combined with practical experience, I shared what I was discovering and found that we were having a collective experience instead of a solo one. The people who became my clients wanted to understand and be involved in this process. So, I found myself talking about color theory and line density, and pigment opacity for hours and hours and being creatively fed. The conversations would turn to many different subjects from there, religion, spirituality, movies, music, philosophy... we were on a path.

That path has led me here, to this new website and hopefully a way for us to start a new chapter. I wish to share what I have and what I’ve learned, I wish also to invite you to join me. I wanted to create an interactive glimpse into my mind, my thoughts, and my ideas. This is something that will only work with your involvement and enthusiasm. So please interact with me on whatever level you wish. If you’d like to watch, that’s fine, if you have questions, I will try to answer them and if you’d like to help fund this endeavor it is appreciated. There is no pressure, come look around and participate as much or as little as you like. My only wish is to be helpful."

- PD