There is a working joke within the artistic industries concerning the dream shopper. The one who turns up with a imprecise however real emotional impulse, says one thing like “I belief you”, after which will get out of the way in which. For many designers, illustrators and artwork administrators, it is a fable. For Travis Fountain, it is a Tuesday.
Travis is a Brooklyn-based tattoo artist who works completely in monochrome, producing surrealist compositions that look much less like tattoos and extra like stills from movies but to be made.
His items are dense with narrative: figures wading by means of cracked landscapes, skeletons framed by clockwork suns, solitary our bodies perched in thorned branches. They really feel pulled from some non-public mythology that solely the wearer absolutely understands. And that is kind of how they arrive into existence.
The transient is a sense
His purchasers do not usually arrive with Pinterest boards. They arrive with a core reminiscence, a music lyric, a half-formed feeling they cannot shake. From there, Travis takes over solely.
He sketches by hand (no iPad, no Procreate, no generative AI shortcuts), and builds a totally unique composition rooted in his personal visible vocabulary. That is uncommon in an trade that trades closely in reference and iteration. It is also the form of authorship most working creatives spend their careers attempting to earn.
What makes this much more fascinating is Travis’s background. He got here to tattooing from engineering, which maybe explains the structural precision in his work; the way in which gentle behaves throughout his items feels engineered moderately than approximated. His shading attracts on chiaroscuro portray and photographic lighting, and the outcomes sit someplace between graphite illustration and idea artwork. The technical fluency is clear, nevertheless it by no means overwhelms the storytelling.
16 international locations, no presets
Travis has tattooed in 16 international locations, constructing a recognisable model that travels nicely as a result of it would not rely on traits. His visible language is his personal. There is not any flash sheet, no menu.
Each piece is a one-off, developed by means of dialog after which drawn slowly by hand. It is a working methodology that stands in deliberate distinction to the pace and replicability that dominate a lot of the tattoo trade proper now.
This has attracted a loyal and worldwide shopper base, together with the Irish singer-songwriter Dermot Kennedy, who commissioned Travis to create a bit concerning the emotional expertise of writing music. It is the form of collab that reinforces the purpose. Travis would not simply execute concepts; he interprets them. This distinction issues, and it is what elevates his work from craft into one thing nearer to directed illustration.
A e book you are meant to attract on
Proper now, Travis is channelling that follow into a brand new format. His debut e book, Whereas A few of Me Sleeps, is at present on Kickstarter and scheduled for launch within the spring. It collects tattoo drawings made throughout these 16 international locations, alongside stencils and handwritten notes. However the fascinating twist is that pages have been intentionally left open for readers to attract on themselves.
In brief, it is an artwork e book that capabilities as an invite. You are not simply consuming the work; you are extending it. For a e book born out of tattooing, a medium that requires one other individual’s physique to exist, this strategy makes intuitive sense.
Pushing the concept even additional, Travis hosted a preview occasion in Brooklyn on the finish of January, the place enlarged pages from the e book had been put in on the partitions for company to attract on; primarily turning the collaborative ethos of the e book right into a reside set up.
Why this issues
Travis’s follow is value finding out not as a result of tattooing is trendy, however as a result of his working mannequin quietly solves an issue that almost all creatives always wrestle with. How do you construct belief with a shopper rapidly sufficient that they provide you actual artistic freedom? How do you develop a visible language distinctive sufficient that folks search you out for it, moderately than asking you to imitate one thing else?
Within the case of Travis the reply, apparently, is to be extraordinarily good at listening, to work slowly and by hand, and to come back from a self-discipline (engineering) that no one would count on to provide surrealist dream imagery. And for anybody who’s ever sat by means of a briefing assembly, wishing the shopper would simply say what they really feel and go away the room, there may be a lesson in all of that.
