Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.
My name is Duncan and I’m a 24 year old artist currently living and working in Chicago, having just recently moved from Seattle. I work in a variety of mediums but I primarily focus on tattooing and airbrush painting, both on canvas and on clothing. I’ve been making art my whole life but have been taking it seriously as a career with real passion for around 3 years. Outside of art I spend my time skateboarding, riding my bike and reading.

Are there any influences that are core to your work?
I’m influenced by a wide array of artists and sources, but one of the biggest and longest lasting influences for me has been graphic novels/cartoons. Artists like Jean Giraud Moebius have always inspired my work, and as a child I learned to draw by copying characters out of comics like Ghost Rider and X-Men, and animated media like the early Transformers movies and Gundam shows. Frank Frazetta and H.R. Giger have informed a lot of my more recent painting work stylistically and in terms of composition. Getting into art I was never particularly drawn towards fine art and was always more interested in how exciting and dynamic movies and cartoons can be.

How were you introduced to the mediums that you work with?
I got into tattooing kind of by chance. One of my friends was moving into a 3rd story walkup apartment on a 100 degree day and asked me to help him and offered either $50 or his cheapo Amazon tattoo kit. Naturally I chose the tattoo kit and started tattooing that night on the floor of his super sweaty apartment. From then on I knew it was something I was supposed to be doing. As for how I got into airbrushing, I would ride my bike past Midwest Airbrush Supply every day on my way to my warehouse job and I would see these cars in Humboldt Park with insane grim reapers and pictures of Scarface airbrushed on them and couldn’t get over how cool that was. I got promoted to shift lead and got a raise and spent my first good paycheck on an airbrush set up and fell in love with it instantly

Any memorable tattoo sessions that linger with you today?
One of the most memorable sessions I’ve had was a trade that I did with Nina where they had me do a freehand composition on the side of their upper back. After I drew it on I was taking a picture to show them what I had drawn and make sure that they were cool with it and they said they didn’t want to see it at all until I was done. That level of trust was mind blowing to me, especially considering that I had only been doing freehands for a couple of months at that point. Later in the session we heard a bunch of yelling outside and looked out the window to see 8 cops standing outside my apartment all pointing guns at this guy who was yelling and acting super strange. They shot the guy with some of those big rubber bullets and he didn’t react at all. After they chased him down and arrested him the cops were all laughing like it was the most fun thing they had done all day. Crazy tattoo session. Fuck the police.

What is it like to freehand intricate tattoos?
Freehanding for me is such a freeing way of tattooing. It is very improvisational compared to using a stencil, since the markers I use to freehand with are generally a lot thicker than the actual needle I end up tattooing with, I end up making up most of the small details as I go. The best part for me is how with freehand you can really make a tattoo that fits a person”s body perfectly, going with the shape of muscles and flowing around joints in a way that a stencil could never do. It is definitely harder than using a stencil, and it requires a lot of thinking and active attention since I’m not just tracing something that I already drew, but the natural and organic quality to a freehand tattoo makes it so worth the extra effort.

Does you work tattooing & airbrushing influence each other in any way?
Tattooing and airbrushing clothing definitely go hand in hand for me. I’m not able to create the same effects with the tattoo machine as I am with the airbrush and vice versa, but the way in which the placement matters and the way that it flows with the body is very similar. In both mediums I make an effort to use the movement of the body interestingly, specifically joints like shoulders and elbows. I love when a tattoo has as much movement as possible. I’d much rather tattoo an elbow that has 180 degrees of possible movement than a spot like the side of the arm that isn’t dynamic at all.

Do you approach airbrushing differently if it’s on clothing or on canvas?
I definitely do approach clothes and canvas differently. I think about clothes a lot like tattoos, to me it’s more like decorating the item in cool placements and creating interesting layered compositions that are less about the actual imagery and more about how it sits on the body and moves. Most of my recent clothing has been composed of lots of smaller compositions that overlap each other, which is how I treat the tattoos that I do and that I get. For canvases, I think of it as a single image that has to convey a certain feeling and stand alone as a coherent composition. I’m not always trying to literally display a message with my paintings, but I think of it in a much more controlled and careful way than I do with clothes.

What’s your current studio or workspace like? Do you have any rituals when you settle in there?
I’m currently in between studios, in the process of setting up a home studio in my new apartment. In Seattle, I rented a spot above this music venue called El Corazon with three other guys and would lock myself in there as much as I could just painting and smoking cigarettes all day. I’d walk there from my house as early as I could in the day and stop at the Goodwill on the way and buy box sets of DVDs like the X Files and 24. When I got to the studio I’d put in a DVD and tack up whatever I was painting on the wall and just stare at it for most of an episode until I really figured out what I wanted to do with it.

What was your experience like as an artist living and working in Seattle?
My experience in Seattle was kind of a double-edged sword I would say. There were a few really incredible artists that I was really glad to meet and work with, and I was able to get a foothold in the art world there, so I’m very grateful for that. However, I was disappointed to find out that the scene of work that I was actually interested in was relatively small and I felt like I was reaching a kind of a dead end creatively. That’s a huge part of the reason I ended up moving to Chicago, I feel like there’s so much energy out here and so many people really pushing for something new and interesting.

What was it like to participate in the group exhibition I Made Something Today at Slip Gallery in Seattle?
The show at Slip was such an incredible experience for me. It was my first time being invited to show work in a gallery, which I have Tai to thank for. I had just gotten broken up with a week before and was not doing well and it was incredibly impactful for me to see people reacting to my work and really feeling like part of a community that I had a place in. All the other artists did such a great job as well and it was a super special night for me that I won’t forget. Before that show I was not really sure if the gallery world was something that I was interested in, but after that experience I know it’s something I will try very hard to pursue.

How do you mitigate burnout or exhaustion?
I’m lucky to have multiple different outlets for my art, so I would say that burnout is not a huge issue for me. When I get sick of airbrushing, I can focus on tattoos, and when I get sick of tattooing I’ll just draw instead. I definitely have slow periods creatively but I almost never feel like I don’t want to be making art or like it takes too great of a toll on me.