Interview
Brian Kelly
Brian has been tattooing since 2002. He founded the Brian Kelly Army in the same year. He holds a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design, and an MFA from the National University of Ireland Galway in association with the Burren College of Art.
As a tattoo artist, Brian specializes in what he describes as the New Traditional Style—a re-imagined version of traditional tattoo designs, sometimes referred to as old school tattoos.
Brian also loves painting tattoo flash, using the cut-up technique, splicing and interweaving traditional flash motifs into new and unexpected designs. Inspired by Dadaist literary technique and borrowing from the spirit of collage, these brush-painted and spit-shaded designs are traditional in style and method, but wholly original in their combinations and juxtapositions.
Brian Kelly lives in Berlin. He tattoos at the world-famous Rose of No Man’s Land in Neukölln.
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“I grew up in southern Minnesota. I majored in comics art for my BFA, while at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design, though I was also a painter. After finishing my undergraduate degree, I began tattooing, which was another love of mine. I moved to Ireland for my MFA, where I concentrated on painting for my degree while also working as a tattoo artist. After my degree, I moved to Berlin because I heard it was cool. Before my move, I made the decision to concentrate on one area. I stopped painting and drawing comics, and focused only on tattooing.
Drawing tattoo flash—the name for design sheets—is an essential part of the craft for me. While researching my thesis in graduate school, the idea of making cut-up tattoo flash took root. However, it took several years before I developed a working system. Now I’m able to create an almost limitless amount of tattoo flash, having circumvented the need to come up with an idea.”
What inspires you most?
“I am inspired by the history of tattooing. Being a white male from a working class background, I’m very interested in the tattooing of the early 20th century. I was introduced to tattoo art from hanging around punk rockers and other similar groups in society. This is the root of tattooing for me. The times of the old sailors’ shops covered in tattoo flash, where a person would walk in and pick something off the wall.
Because of my art school background, however, I am inspired to make something more of my designs, and not simply reproduce the same images over and over.”
What themes do you pursue? Is there an underlying message in your work?
“When I create a tattoo flash, the work is about the process. I have created a system for producing cut-ups of tattoo flash. A cut-up, as the name implies, is created by cutting apart images and randomly reassembling them. For me, creating cut-ups acts as a conduit for tattoo designs. The older designs of the 20th century are considered by many to be a distillation of basic desires. Old tattoo designs are very simplified and direct because of the constraints of the tools that were available at that time. My cut-ups re-imagine these basic desires and create new ones. I don't hope to create meaning. I only recombine things at random so that the viewer can contemplate new possibilities.”
How would you describe your work?
“My work is best described as a new traditional or modern traditional tattoo flash. My images work great as tattoo designs, but as tattooing has become quite popular, and the mainstream has become interested in tattoo history, the images are also art by themselves.
My years spent drawing comics made me quite proficient at using brushes, which I am able to use for my tattoo flash, though many of my colleagues use a pen or marker. I also prefer to have a coffee-stained background, which creates a little bit of an unknown or uncontrolled element to the finished look.”
Which artists influence you most?
“Cut-ups are a technique most popularized by William Burroughs, but Brion Gysin had accidentally rediscovered it and introduced it to him. Cut-ups first made an appearance as a literary device with the Dadaists. A lot of the material for my cut-ups come from early 20th century tattooers, though I also mix in material from more contemporary tattooers, and some cut-ups come from seemingly unrelated areas, such as classical European sculpture.”
What is your creative process like?
“My creative process starts with pulling images out the cut-up box. Before or after this, I will have set perimeters for the set of flash. I decide on whether it should be simply black and grey, or colored, and if colored, what colors to use. I generally make a set of about 6 tattoo flash pages. Sometimes the new images come out of the box fully formed. Other times, it takes a lot of scribbling and procrastinating to make something out of the images provided by the box.
The images are constrained by what I know will function and hold on skin as a tattoo. I am also very interested in technique. Although digital design making is quite popular in tattooing presently, all my work is handmade. I use only brushes to line and shade my drawings/paintings.
Since I’m emulating the tattoo flash from the past, I also spit-shade the designs. I use two brushes for this: one with the ink, and the other with a cup of water for shading. The term spit-shading comes from using the mouth to control the water on the shading brush. Without this, it is not spit-shading. In general, I like the idea of not knowing what to expect from my images—from the chance of the images from the cut-up box, to the chance of many intentionally introduced techniques used to create the image.”
What is an artist’s role in society and how do you see that evolving?
“My career is split between being a craftsperson and the artistic pursuit of creating tattoo flash. My job as a tattoo artist is as a craftsperson, where I provide a service to my client. When creating my cut-ups, I function as a conduit for the randomly determined images. I think my role is to create an image or idea that will make the viewer think or consider something new.”
