A Pioneer in Water Color Tattooing Amanda Wachob is a New York City-based artist who is internationally known for her innovative and conceptual work with the tattoo medium. Her canvases include fruit, leather, linen, and skin. She has done projects with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New Museum, the Museum of Arts and Design, The Clyfford Still Museum, the Rubin Museum of Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, and The Whitney. Pioneering the watercolor tattoo movement and actively bridging the gap between tattooing and fine art, she has exhibited her work in galleries and museums worldwide. In an interview with Coveteur she stated, “Initially people thought that I was totally insane. [They] didn’t really understand what I was trying to do, especially when I started to make a lot of the abstract work. I had the idea that perhaps an abstract image is more capable of representing something intangible, like an emotion, since so much of who we are is an abstract thought. People would bring in a photograph of a flower from their garden and want it to look like [that]. It didn’t make sense for me to make [the tattoo] resemble a cartoon and throw a black outline around it. It was a very intentional act of rebellion and defiance against my industry to work that way. There is a lot of group-think, and it’s actually very conservative. There are right ways to do things, and there are wrong ways to do things." Watercolor Tattoos: These days, her method for creating some of the larger abstract tattoos begins with a painting for each person. “I tell people I’ll make three, but I usually wind up making ten to fifteen. I always ask [them] to bring a reference for me, [like] a photograph of a sunset, or a piece of fabric—anything that contains the colors they’d like to see in their tattoo so I can get a better sense of what they want.” I actually discovered her work back when I was in high school circa 2015. As a watercolor artist myself and a tattoo blogger at the time, I always found her work to be fascinating. Watercolor on skin!? What a concept. She goes on to say that, "[I love] just about anything involving a tattoo needle. On canvas, some fruit. I love the weight of the machine now. I feel like it grounds me." Alternative Canvases: I love her description of the marbled canvas, "This painting is a surrealistic technique called decalcomania. Max Ernst was one of the painters that used this technique. It’s kind of like a Rorschach." If you're here you know I am always looking for crossovers between psychology and art so it was exciting to find that connection point with Amanda's work. How often can one say that you and an artist that has inspired you both made works (while unaware of each other's project) that were inspired by the same thing [Rorschach's Ink Blots]?
I have to mention one more set of work by Amanda before ending this post because it has been one of my favorite tattoo series by her thus far. Protective Evil Eye Talismans:
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AuthorHaven Wright Archives
February 2021
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