Luke Atkinson is an old traveller of tattooing. From the four corners of the world where his passion for ink drove him, and especially from Japan where the English man got transcended by the tattoo culture, he brought back an ethic of the craft that he shares with his customers for the last 25 years, in his Stuttgart’s studio : Checker De-mon.
After so long running the studio in Stuttgart, what are the things you are particularly attentive to with the people who works with you ?
If you show me a great passion, then I start to have time for you. If you think it’s just a cool job and you’re gonna be the cool guy who makes tattoos as an easy life, you’re knocking on the wrong door. The guys who work here they really work hard, they showed me great potential and have grown amazingly. If the desire is there you can go far. I firmly believe, it’s a give and take game : it’s not just me giving, I get a lot in return too. It takes me back to where I come from, when I started, and had this passion, this hunger to learn. It’s like a big push to keep going. The journey is never over.
When tattooers tend to specialise themselves at a very early age, one thing you partic-ularly insist on for a tattooer is to be able to work in every style. Why ?
Des tatouages sans tracé, avec peu de dégradé de noir… je pense qu’ils seront assez ternes en vieillissant. Mais personne n’en parle, les gens sont bombardés dans les mé-dias de photos de tatouages fraîchement réalisés. Ils ne réalisent pas qu’ils perdent de leur éclat au fil du temps, c’est inévitable. Les gens vont apprendre à la dure. Pourtant, je considère que c’est la responsabilité du tatoueur d’informer les clients qui viennent avec ce genre de demandes.
Something that you learnt on the road while travelling. You lived at a very early age in New-York, before leaving England at 15 to go to live in Cologne, Germany. Even though you settled in Stuttgart, you´ve never stopped travelling since then. How did these travels shape the tattooer you are today ?
I knew that I wanted to work with certain people, go visit them, get tattooed, and see what hap-pened. Once you break this fear of going to a place and not knowing what’s going on, I think the world becomes your oyster. And the more confident you are about it, the better it is. I can hon-estly say that travelling alone is much better. Many more doors open, you are focused on what you want and deal with your own experiences. When I started to really travel seriously I was fearless. At 20 years old, I moved from Europe to New-York with 1000 dollars in my pocket. « I’m going to live in New-York ! » and everybody was like : « Ok, see you in 2 weeks ! ». I never came back. And then, one year after, I moved from America to Japan with the same amount of money in my pocket.
Tattooing and travelling, they fit together so perfectly…
Yes. Tattooing is a great tool because you can work anywhere you want – to survive, eat and pay your rent and move on to the next place. It wasn`t that common at this time for someone to walk into a shop and say : « Here`s my portfolio, have a look at it. Can I have a job ? » I did that all the time : « I’m here, can I work ? ». I never got turned down, nobody said no. I was extremely lucky and really learnt a lot with the artists that gave me the opportunity to work together.
You are one of the first european tattooers to go to Japan in the late 1980´s where you meet Horiyoshi III in Yokohama. How did it happen?
I was writing to him when I was 17, we were kind of penpals. I’d have never met him but I would send him photos of my work and a letter ; and I got a letter back with photographs of his work. When you’re 17 years old and something like this happens, it changes your life. I wrote to him saying : « I’m coming to Japan to visit you », and he replies: « You’re welcome », thinking : « No, he’s never gonna come ». But here I was « ding-dong » ! I’ve been very fortunate because I was so young, a lot of people that I went to visit were like a father figures. I was very fortunate to have such valuable meetings, and get on with everybody so well.
You were very young, how do you explain this positive reaction from old-timers in an era when tattooing was still a pretty closed world?
You had to prove yourself, they weren’t gonna give any secrets away without you proving your passion and interest to learn. Passion opens doors, that I’m convinced of. And to me these were people I could respectfully learn from. We’re talking about tattooing but there was the whole other spectrum of life experience that goes with it. So you’re travelling, going to eat with these people, trying new food, and if you’re open to all these things, if you open your mind and your palette for life, people like it ; they see you’re making an effort, they see you want to learn how they do things. It reaches everybody if you’re able to do that. It opens up doors in life that are normally shut.
Your trip to Japan was a big step in your carreer, what happened ?
I spend a lot of time with japanese tattooers and I was very interested in their approach. I’ve been very fortunate to sit and watch how they practice their art. Horiyoshi III, Horitoshi I, Horiwaka… All together over 20 different Japanese tattooers. It was a real eye-opening experience to see people working on large scale tattoos every day and watch this image grow over time, it’s amaz-ing. It was truly : « I want to do that ! » ; but I wasn`t prepared in my younger years to even work out how I would approach something like that. So it’s kind of good that it didn’t happen then. Over time it has slowly grown and I understand much more now.
You are now mostly concentrating on japanese tattooing
Yeah, japanese, Asian ideas. It’s a lot of fun to tattoo, it works well with the body and the images are kind of timeless. I guess my approach is not to try and be 100% traditional - I don’t come from a traditional apprenticeship or a school as such – but it’s to give a good looking tattoo using these references and has also a little bit of my own view on how to do the background. I love the idea that there is a lot of black, giving depth in the background, It helps the images pop forward.
You have a picture of Fudô Myô-ô tattooed on your back, can you tell us about this spe-cial relationship you have with this buddhist deity ?
I discovered it in my early 20s, when I was in Japan. They say in many cultures where they have many different kinds of these buddhist deities, certain ones speak to certain people. I can honest-ly say this one jumped out at me immediately. I was fascinated by it. I was always looking where I could go to temples, see sculptures, or paintings, I got to see them as tattoos when visiting Hori-yoshi III. It fueled me no end. Fudô Myô-ô is the god of wisdom, a protective symbol, standing strong. He cuts through bullshits, confuses evil, …About 10 years ago, I decided to put an exhibi-tion together with some friends, and colleagues that I thought would be interested, it turned out to be a great success,running for a few years every 6 months. It really put Fudomyoo back on the world map,and was great to see it become popular with tattooers all over the globe.
From all these travels, is there a specific character who really stand out?
Hanky Panky, probably the most. He did my first tattoo in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, when I was 15. The shop was in a seedy area, sex, drugs and rock’n’roll in the city of sin. I walked in, there were some Hells Angel’s there, I had a drawing with me and I asked him how much it would be. He said : « 250 guilders ». I thought : « Fuck ! ». I didn’t have enough money. I asked for only a part of it and got a 15 minutes tattoo from him ; but it was the bite where I was going back to Amsterdam, bugging him all the time : « I want to learn tattooing », getting kicked out of the shop ... Two years after moving to Cologne I started tattooing and returned to say I was tattooing, his words this time were : « Listen, fuck off around the world, and then come and see me ». That’s exactly what I did. When I finally got back to Europe, I worked in his shop for 7 or 8 months. Great experience, another dream come true, a real street shop.
When you took over Toby’s shop here in Stuttgart, 24 years ago, it was working as a street shop. But the idea of custom tattooing was still progressing in Europe after Ed Hardy’s breakthrough in the 70’s. How did you jump on the train ?
It was a really busy street shop when I arrived here. Saturday morning there was like 20 people wating outside. I would work sometimes 11 hours and I did this for about 3 months working 6 days a week. I’ve worked for nearly 10 years in the street shop way of doing things. It’s great for building up your techniques and understanding tattooing, but the time came to try and swing things around and make it more challenging. I decided to concentrate on each customer and spend time with them working on more personal designs. This is 1992. Most studios were walk-ins studios, so it took a year or so to get the idea out there, that this could work. So all the shop flash was taken down.
Was it difficult to settle down ?
It took me some time. It’s difficult, I still get the urge to go off. But now I have more responsabili-ties, kids, people who work with me. Responsability takes over. But it’s fun. I have many visitors coming to Stuttgart that want to learn something and I’m very happy to share my experiences. If it helps people to see something new...great!
How do you look at the new generations of tattooers?
It’s a different approach. There are still tattooers that are passionate, want to learn, with the guts to travel, not be afraid, and to grow and build up their reputation. But there are also very many that are stuck in more a business attitude and stuck in what´s fashionable. It’s a corporate indus-try now, there is so many tattoo shops ; it’s more like you’re fighting to survive than actually learning to be feeding yourself with something to make you stronger and more powerful. There is an interesting story with this. There was an university teacher in America. At the end of the semester he asks his students : « What do you want to do now that you’ve finished studying ? ». They answer : « Waaow, I’d like to be a musician, an artist, a writer, but you can never make any money at it. So I guess I’ll get a job where I make money. » And he says : « That is completely wrong. If you concentrate in your life, on a passion, on something that you love, first of all you’ll never have to work again in your life because you do something you love to do. If you do it every-day, in the beginning for sure it’s harder times but if you’re passionnate in doing something every day, of course you’re gonna be good at it, you’re gonna grow. And then, when you’re good at it and you start making some money, then your life becomes more fruitfull. There is nothing stronger or better in life than doing what you love to do». I try to talk to young people about this.
Tattoos should last. What do you think about styles like the dotwork, the watercolour style ?
No line work, not too much black shading, I think it will look weak.… People don’t realise be-cause also they are bombarded with information of a fresh tattoo. Nobody talks about what it’s gonna look like in 5-10 years. People are going to learn the hard way. Tattoos fade over time, no matter what. I talk to people and tell them when they come in and ask for that kind of stuff. It’s part of the responsability of the tattooer. I am very curious when I see tattoos over time, what happens to them. A LOT!
Do you still get tattooed ?
Yes I do, nearly done now! If you’re passionnate about it, then you get tattooed.
Contact :
http://checker-demon-tattoos.de https://www.instagram.com/checkerdemontattoos/ http://checker-demon-press.org
