The original concept behind this piece was to represent a magical tattoo, usually in the form of an animal, that would, at the owner's command, slide from their body and do their bidding. At first I played around with the most obvious concept, show a guy, plenty of tattoos, put him in a cool pose and bam!, you've got your image. But of course I can never do anything the easy way, so I started thinking about the idea of a tattoo. Now as I see it of all the reasons to get a tattoo there must be those instances where the recipient feels somehow connected with the imagery involved, I mean, what better reason to permanently mark one's body? Take this a step further and instead of just wanting to feel connected, what if we had a guy that got the tattoo because he actually wants to become that which is portrayed? Here we've got a person so taken with the idea of becoming a bird that he would go so far as to sew a bird's skull to his neck and construct a pair of surrogate wings to better imitate his "brethren". The inkwell does double duty as both the container for the essence of the tattoo and the perch for the man-bird, the barbarous tattooing needles represent the trial by pain to fully realize the transition, and the teeth are the final sacrifice this tormented wretch made when he pulled them out to match a bird's toothless beak. The gear with the bones, however I put in there just as filler. I really needed something to finish out the composition and that's all that came to mind. Hey, can't win em all.
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