From illustration to Skin: Rosie's artistic journey in tattooing

As with many artists before her, Rosie’s path to tattooing wasn’t a straight line. 

Born to creative parents—Dad, a designer, and mom, an avid sewist—Rosie took to art naturally. While her high school marks led her to apply to the sciences in college, something didn’t feel right. She decided to change her application last minute to study art instead. “I can be quite stubborn at times,” she says. “If I want to do it, I'm going to go and do it.”

Rosie pursued a university education in art, exploring every medium from textiles to ceramics. “I tried to do as much as I could in the hope one day something would click,” she says. Through that period, she honed a bold, graphic illustration style that translated to a career as a freelance artist. 

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Freelancing was unstable at times, though, and London was an expensive place. “I would have some months that were really good and I'd sell paintings,” she says. “The next month, it was just bleak.” 

Rosie settled into a life working from home. This, combined with pressure of earning enough to live in London, made it hard for her to stick to a healthy work schedule. She knew she needed a change—a job that would give her routine and facilitate social interactions which weren’t centred around alcohol. ‍

“When you really want something, you can make it work if you put enough time and effort into it.”

Tattooing was something Rosie always considered, but the permanence of it scared her. For this reason, out of all the creative processes she wanted to try, it was the one she procrastinated most. 

But one day, she tattooed a small circle on her own leg and made the call: she was going for it. From that moment, Rosie decided to focus entirely on practicing the craft of hand poking, putting other mediums on hold and moving back home to Norwich to escape London living costs. A few months later she got invited to be resident at a studio in Clapton and started commuting down on weekends to work. “When you really want something, you can make it work if you put enough time and effort into it,” she says. 

For Rosie, the transition between the solace of working from home to meeting two new people a day in a bustling studio was initially overwhelming. “It’s almost like I had to retrain myself to socialise,” she says. But overcoming that hurdle was a net positive. 

Tattooing created a work environment she hadn’t had before—one in which she could form and nurture connections with others outside of conventional spaces that revolved around alcohol. “One of the best things about tattooing for me is that it's given me that part of my life back,” she says. 

“Tattooing can completely transform someone's confidence in a positive way or a negative way.” 

The relationship between tattoo artist and client is a deeply personal one. “Tattooing can completely transform someone's confidence in a positive way or a negative way,” Rosie says, touching on how she’s experienced both through being tattooed herself. She explains, however, it’s the tattoos she’s unhappy with that remind her how important it is to communicate thoroughly with her clients. “It made me better with my clients,” Rosie says. “You need to make sure people are 100 percent happy with what is about to go on their body.”

After a year of commuting, working, and saving, Rosie is leaving the UK to travel—starting in Vietnam and ending in South America. “We don't really have a plan, we're just making it up as we go along,” she says.

During her year away Rosie hopes to rediscover her creativity while continuing to explore the medium of tattooing, eventually through learning how to use a machine. “One of the reasons tattooing is so appealing to me is because it's something I can do from wherever in the world,” she says. 

“The fact that people actually like my stuff enough to get it on them forever, that's pretty amazing,” Rosie says. “I'll always be so grateful for that.”