Artist in view: Charles Huurman
How did you get involved with tattooing and how did you find your personal style of tattooing?
Now living in New York City, I was raised between Ireland and Spain and I became a successful businessman and entrepreneur at the early age of 21. In 2008, with the economic crisis, and some bad decisions of my own, I lost everything, which meant I had to refocus my life. During my business years I was amazed by listening to my cousin and a friend.
My cousin is a dancer, and my friend a surfer living in his van. None of them earning much or either were recognised as top in their field. But they couldn’t care less, their eyes would light up when talking about dancing and surfing, that’s all they cared about. In my new beginning in life, I realised I wanted what they had, an obsession that makes me focus in a passion without caring about money or status.
Ready for a new start and a different approach to my career, I decided to embark in something I truly loved and turn it into something I could live on and enjoy at the same time. Therefore, I asked myself “What did I ever do for fun that could be of any value to make a living?”. The only answer I could find was painting.
Now, I had not permitted myself to take this path previously being one of the reasons that my father, a talented oil painter, had never managed to make a living exclusively with his art. However, for me it was different this time, I had lost it all, so I considered I had nothing to lose. Without an oil painting sold I began to take an interest on my friends’ tattoos. Initially they would ask me to draw something and then I would see it on them a few days later, my art depicted forever on their skin. The concept was very powerful, what better way of getting appreciation for your art than people having it on their body forever? This alone made me start a journey that changed my life!
What is the thing you enjoy most in the tattoo industry?
The freedom of travelling. This industry allows you to travel anywhere in the world and you can get a work very easily just by showing your portfolio and I don’t know any industry that by only showing a few of your pictures you would get a work anywhere.
Do you have a ritual or specific thing you do every time before you start tattooing?
Every morning I get up super early and I need to do some training, basically the gym or running. I don’t know if it’s kind of a ritual but for me is super important to do some training just to get the blood flowing and get in that mental zone.
What’s something you haven’t done yet but would love to tackle? (Tattoo related)
Currently, there are so many things in this industry that need to be done, that need to be addressed, and I needed solutions for myself and there wasn’t anything that existed in a good quality so we have started a specific software that is good quality for running tattoo studios and we’ve been a few years investing and creating this software that will allow tattoo studios to run like a business. There are some software solutions, but they’re adapted from other industries, they weren’t really created for our industry, so we’ve been a few years speaking with different studios that have different necessities to create from scratch software that’s only for studios and artists in our industry, not something that’s adapted from beauty salons or something that is not really the same.
What’s missing in the tattoo industry? What would you like to see change?
Definitely we need a solid union of tattoo artists, a coalition that is able to defend us from all these new multinationals that are coming into the industry. We are welcoming these multinationals because they are bringing a heavy investment into the industry but we need to keep the things that make beautiful this industry, we need to keep them safe so we actually need a good association or something that unites tattoo artists and studios to keep our values and freedoms so we don’t become overruled by all these multinationals or governments who want to make inks illegal and they want to make stupid rules that are not really necessary just because they want to control us.
Who are your biggest inspirations, or artists you admire and why?
Apart from my father, who is a painter, I would go for Dmitriy Samohin. Not only because I think he is the best realist in the world, black&grey and colour, that’s my opinion and I can back it up with arguments. It’s also I had the pleasure of working beside him and seen the professionalism and preparation, before each piece, can be taken to the limit, it’s just like seeing perfection - so that inspires me. Then there’s a lot of artists that were a big inspiration - for me Csaba Müllner was my biggest inspiration because she was the first artist I saw mixing abstract styles with realism.
If you could be any tattoo artist in the world for a day, who would you be and why, what would you do?
I’ve actually fantasised about this question many times. I don’t know how much is real about this because all I know is from stories I’ve heard, but I’m not going to say only what artist, I’m actually going to also say what time in history and were in the world.
I would love to be Filip Leu in the 80s in Ibiza when he had the Leu Family Studio in the center of Ibiza island. Everything was kind of hippie and some of the best artists in the world would travel to that forest in the middle of that beautiful island to tattoo with Filip Leu who, for me, is like the Jesus Christ of tattooing. A true living legend.
What is most important for avoiding bad tattoo healing?
To use Tattoo Armour :)
What’s your favourite tattoo convention(s) and why?
My favourite Tattoo Conventions are definitely Mondial du Tatouage in Paris which is by far the best organised convention I’ve ever seen (the area and everything about it) so I hope they can do it again, and the Hong Kong Convention. It is crazy, in the middle of Hong Kong city and the organiser Gabe is super good so it’s a great event.
Is there a specific body part you enjoy tattooing and one you really don’t enjoy tattooing, and why?
I think most tattoo artists would love tattooing the inside lower arm because it’s the best skin, the best position for tattooing (it’s very comfortable) and for the healing it avoids the sun and it avoids all the elements so it heals great and it looks great after years. But then, I love doing sleeves, how to connect everything, something difficult that I’ve been working on for years and now I really, really enjoy to connect all those different pieces and see day after day how they come together.
And I hate tattooing, like everyone I think, elbows & nipples…