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may was a challenging month (and no, i don't blame mercury). i had my worst string of cancellations ever, which resulted in an unexpected two weeks off from work. i found myself questioning more than ever before whether tattooing is really a viable way for me to make a living. at the same time, though, i'm feeling more excited about tattooing than i have in a very long time. i was able to use my time outside the studio to develop a new generation of designs, and i was fortunate enough to have several opportunities to experiment with new materials and techniques. somewhat unexpectedly, i've begun to fall in love with color. i still need to work on my techniques, and to figure out exactly how i want to integrate it into my practice, but i can tell this is the start of something fruitful. i've been a painter much longer than i've been a tattoo artist, so in that sense working with color comes naturally. creating mixes, building color palettes, and learning about the qualities of different pigments are all things i've taken a lot of pride in. i think i got turned off of color in tattooing due to the ways in which i've seen color employed by others, which are usually either gaudy and cartoonish, or hyper-realistic. i also was (and still am) intimidated by the complexity of all the additional variables it introduces to the process. i'm definitely convinced now that the potential it brings is worth the challenge, though.

i was able to make my time off from tattooing into a fruitful period, and i cranked out a heap of new designs, which have supplanted most of the previous work in my portfolio. it's a huge relief to have a substantial body of work i feel very energized about, and to retire all the designs that have come to feel stale. perhaps a cliche metaphor, but this practice feels very much like a garden - ideas germinating and growing into motifs, cross-pollinating, mutating, propagating.

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as it always does, spring arrived in a flash. the surrounding landscape is changing by the hour, and my thoughts turn to unfurling microbiomes and bubbling algae. in its resurgence after winter, plant and fungal life feels somewhat alien and surreal. all that was cold and still is now churning and mutating. it's impossible to not feel invigorated and inspired.

recently, a lot of my work has come to feel a bit stale. this is probably true of any art practice, but tattooing especially comes with a lot of "stylistic inertia." the work i do is largely determined by work that i've done previously, making it somewhat difficult to shift directions. it's been so long since i took any extended time to develop new ideas. don't worry, i'm not planning on overhauling my practice and becoming an american traditional or black and grey realism artist! but there are lots of concepts bubbling up and untested techniques i'd like to explore. specifically, i'm interested in using more negative space, more subtle lines, more variation in value, and using grey tones and shading. i've been inspired recently by my former studiomate Moth, who has a beautiful way of embracing fragility and imperfection in their work. tattooing is delicate business, and skin is a very imperfect medium. i'm a perfectionist by nature, but i've learned that in chasing perfection, it's very easy to lose the detail that brings a tattoo to life. i'm also inspired by my new studiomate Liev, who has an incredible grasp of texture. the way they handle a tattoo machine feels more akin to a pencil or stick or charcoal than a pen.

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as you can see from the photo above, mid-march marked the first emergence of the larch needles in my neighborhood. for those who don't know, larch is a genus of conifer trees, all of whom are deciduous - meaning they shed their leaves (which happen to be needles) each autumn and grow back new ones each spring. since they're not evergreen, they lack the tough, sturdy needles of most conifers, and instead have very soft and supple foliage. to me, there's something very enchanting about this plant, which defies our binaristic assumptions about nature. there's nothing intrinsically evergreen about conifers, nor anything intrinsically deciduous about hardwoods. these are flawed categories we have created for convenience. the larch (specifically the american larch, or tamarack, larix laricina) is also fascinating to me on an aesthetic level. the older specimens (not like the young tree picture here) are strikingly rugged and gnarled, encrusted with lichens, which results in a beautiful contrast against the soft, glowing-green needles. tamaracks are hardy trees, and can survive in environments where few other trees can, such as acidic peat bogs. in such places, they often take on bizarre and eccentric shapes, with many of the branches bare and skeletal. i have a very vivid memory of seeing one in a bog in the adirondacks, which stood like a needle in a pincushion, stuck at an angle in the waterlogged earth, and completely leafless except for a single plume of green foliage halfway up the trunk. up close, some branches are so rich with detail, i can easily imagine shrinking myself down to flea-size and wandering through their alien forests. it is a tree that contains worlds.

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hello and happy march! i'm writing this shortly after encountering my first spring flowers of the season, at a spot down the road that has reliably produced snowdrops every year in early march (or sometimes late february). the very early spring can be a tough time - cold, muddy, and still mostly lifeless. i think it's an incredibly special time though. the feeling of anticipation is so palpable, as if the branches and soil are on the verge of bursting. i recently got pulled into a wikipedia deep dive on the early history of life on earth, in particular the ediacaran fauna - an enigmatic family of organisms that existed around 600 million years ago. this was before the cambrian explosion of biodiversity, in which animal life as we know it began to take shape. the ediacaran fauna represent the earliest known examples of complex, multicellular organisms with specialized organs. they bear little resemblance to modern lifeforms, and their evolutionary lineage is mostly a matter of speculation. it's not known whether they are related to subsequent cambrian lifeforms, or if they are an isolated branch of the evolutionary tree. in a very roundabout way, these biological oddities seem to capture something of the liminal season we find ourselves in now.

in less esoteric news, last month i had the privilege of hosting my very first guest artist at the studio! Liev (@trinketkeeper) ventured all the way from oregon to spend a few days in beacon. it was truly a joy to meet them, and to show them around some of my favorite places in the local area. we walked together around denning's point - a waterfront preserve in beacon, and the former site of a brick factory - chatting while they scanned the ground for human-made detritus to collect. i was very impressed by the enormous pair of forceps they carry with them, for the express purpose of collecting artistically useful trash. later on, we visited the woodland ruins of an early 20th century mansion and farmstead, known as the cornish estate. no matter how many times i've visited a place myself, showing it to people always allows me to see it with new eyes. i'm excited to welcome them back to the east coast (sometime tba) in the near future!

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it's been a while! turns out, once you lose a habit, it can be hard to get it back. from now on i'll be sending out this newsletter monthly rather than biweekly. in spite of omicron, january turned out to be a great month, and i had the privilege of working with some wonderful folks to create some of my favorite pieces. after a very mild december, we finally got a real taste of winter here, and the river began to freeze in dramatic fashion. i've often heard stories of how, a century or so ago, the river used to freeze so smooth and flat that people could skate from beacon to newburgh, and would race in sail-powered ice boats. back then, winters were colder, and it was also before icebreakers were deployed to keep the shipping channel open at all times. such ice seems like a distant fantasy now. though it may be less recreationally useful, i am enamored with the rugged, erratic ice formed as the river freezes slowly, crystallizing and tearing apart over and over, crashing against the shore. the landscapes formed in the rubble are endless and fractal, enchanting and intimidating.

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it feels like winter has arrived here, but not without some trepidation. last week, the first snow came, and the studio grew frigid, with the archaic heating system broken at the worst possible time (don't worry, it's all fixed). now, it is mild and rainy again, with the rain carrying an entirely different feeling than it did before. i've been walking the river beach more often lately, collecting driftwood to take home or to the studio. the tide washed up several branches heavily inscribed by beetles. the longest of these branches seems to me like a wizard's staff, engraved with magical runes in a flowing and forgotten language. these particular markings are unlike any i've seen before - paths punctuated by repeating notches, almost like the teeth on gears. i can't decipher them as an entomologist could, but it's clear that each species has its own language, its own distinctive script.

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shortly before the strange warm spell of the last few days, we had our first frost in my part of the world. i had an open weekend, which is unusual for me these days, and i got up early on saturday morning to go hiking with my parents. it was remarkable foggy - almost too thick and viscous to be real. as we crossed the river, we could see the fog flowing through the valley like a second river, suspended over the water. we drove to a mountain called Schunnemunk, which is one of our favorite autumn hikes, hoping to take advantage of the brilliant foliage, which seemed to be living on borrowed time at this point. while passing through the meadow at the base of the mountain, i noticed swathes of frost clinging to the cleavers and tall grass in the shadows of the trees. a row of elderly maples led us to the trailhead. on the ascent, i found an abundance of hedgehog mushrooms growing amidst the mountain laurel, which i stowed away in the pouch of my jacket. eventually, we broke through the treeline into a wildly different biome - huge slabs of conglomerate rock criss-crossed with fissured and chasms, watched over by a congregation of gnarled pitch pine growing low to the ground. was undoubtedly a formative place for my long-time fascination with crevices and other geological structures.

last week, i helped move my studiomate Moth into the building - i've never shared a space with another tattooer, so this has been a big change for me! like most artists, i deal with a fair amount of imposter syndrome, which has often been exacerbated by my isolation from other people in my craft. i often feel bogged down by an unshakeable sense that i am doing something wrong, that i am not "professional" or "legitimate" enough, and that in reality have no idea what i'm doing. having other tattooers to talk with and bounce ideas off of goes a long way to relieve those feelings. it also feels much less empty in here now, but still far from cramped - the space is the perfect size for two setups.

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hello everyone! autumn is now undeniably upon us, along with the crisp, cool air that i find absolutely addicting. the other day, i went out for a short mushroom forage in one of my usual spots. i didn't get far before i had to turn around. between a gregarious patch of shrimp-of-the-woods (a pallid mycological oddity, resulting from one fungal species parasitizing another) and a hefty fruiting of maitake, my pack and basket were completely filled. the cooler weather has me spending more time sketching and painting outdoors, and i'm working on devoting more time to my art practices outside tattooing. for me, the autumn is a time of creative focus and honing.

september was a great month for me in the studio - the busiest i've ever had by a wide margin, including some of my favorite pieces i've ever worked on. so excited for what october will bring!

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hi everyone! firstly, thank you so much for joining my newsletter. i’m hoping this will be a more reliable way of getting information to potential clients, as well as a place where i can talk a little more at length about my work and inspiration.