Kaylie Seaver, 26
The Inkspot
Common motifs? I realized recently that I’ve been subconsciously working a lot of bones and spines into my artwork. I collect skulls and bones, and I think my interest in that stems from having scoliosis and having had corrective spinal surgery in high school. With tattoos specifically, I include a lot of hands, flowers, and witch symbols.
What is it like being a woman in this traditionally male-dominated
field? I’ve only been in this industry for a short while, and I’m also coming into it at a time when women have way more freedom and opportunities than my predecessors. I have no doubt that women are still struggling to be taken seriously as tattooers and artists, and I’m sure it was very difficult for a lot of them to even have made it into the field at all.
Current trends? Designs?
Innovations? It seems like, with all the new technology around, the art form is practically limitless. Customers are coming in with cooler and more interesting design requests every day — from photo-realism to watercolour to geometric to neo-traditional. Apprenticing versus schooling? When word of the tattoo course at Algonquin first came out, it was kind of like a slap in the face. I had just spent the last two or three years trying to get my foot in the door, sometimes working for free while working two other jobs and putting myself through art school. And then the prospect of 50 kids landing in this program and then surely flooding into shops asking for jobs and possibly getting them was like someone telling me that I had just spent three years doing nothing. Any intelligent shop owner would still want them to apprentice. So the whole point of the program would be null and void, which leads us to believe that the whole thing was just a money grab.
Influences on your art? I’m influenced pretty greatly by music, old woodcuts, religious imagery, tarot cards, Hieronymus Bosch, Egon Schiele, eclectic musical instruments, the occult in general, DIY culture, and everyone in this city who is making things and being innovative.