Personal Identity - Part One Collections

My Mucha arm piece 

For the final project of the year we are looking at ourselves and for the starting point we are looking at our own collections.

Personally I don't collect many things and I wanted to have something in this project that meant a lot to me and was a reflection of me too. This is when the obvious came to mind - My collection of tattoos!

I thought that using my own tattoos would be an excellent starting point as they are an outward reflection of my own personality and in my opinion, are pieces of art in themselves.

My tattoos say a lot about my personality and my personal likes, especially artists and styles of art that I like. Some of them do have meanings too. As well as this, I have been working in a tattoo studio doing apprenticing for over three years - tattooing means a lot to me, it's a passion, a hobby and my career - it would be daft not to explore my own collection of something I am so passionate and dedicated to.
 




As a starting point I looked at why I decided to start getting my tattoos in the first place. The answers included:

• They appeal to my personality
• Aesthetically pleasing to me
• Some hold meaning to them
• An open and outward reflection of my personality
• They are permanent

After this, I need to start ordering and categorizing my tattoos. Ways I categorised them included:

Doing my first tattoo as part of my apprenticeship 

• Colour/Black and grey
• Sentimental/meaning
• Finished pieces/on going work
• Stand alone pieces or multiple pieces merged together
• Style
• Who tattooed them
• Ones I got on my birthdays
• Most and least painful
• How old they are
• Ones one show/hidden away
• Other artists work/my own art

My portrait of my Granmother -

After this I had a group tutorial with the rest of my group and I got to exchange ideas with other students and test on ideas that could be developed.  Aspects of my collections that we discussed included:

• How they relate to my body
• How much of my identity they make up
• The level of commitment involved in having a lot of tattoos
• How do my tattoos relate to those of others - meanings, reasons, ect
• Looking at texture like the skin and inks

I really liked all of these ideas that we discussed and thought that many of them had a lot of scope and depth to them that I could explore.