Today we’d like to introduce you to Nathan Ernce.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
Growing up, I always had a crayon and or a pencil or a marker in my hand, I think comic books first sparked my interest in art, I would spend hours trying to copy the pages in my favorite comics or draw my own comic books. For a long time, I thought I wanted to be a comic book artist for a living, I took art classes all through high school even though in retrospect I didn’t lean a lot from them. High school was also some of my first exposure to tattoos, I had seen tattoos on strangers before and passers-by, my uncle had a mavin the Martian tattoo but for the most part, I wasn’t around them much as a kid. But some of my classmates had hood tats or homemade tattoos or ones they had gotten with fake IDs. I graduated young, so I wasn’t old enough to get tattoos right away like all my friends, but for a whole year waiting to turn 18, I would hang out in tattoo shops and watch my friends get tattoos.
As soon as I was old enough, I just started getting as many as I could. I was working less than pleasant kitchen jobs at the time and every other spare moment I spent hanging out in tattoos shops and just soaking up the environment. After a while of noticing, I was loitering in his shop multiple days a week and taking an interest, one of the tattoo shops I frequented offered to teach me to tattoo, I did a grueling three year apprenticeship where I did everything from coffee runs, floor mopping, tube scrubbing, toilet cleaning, phone answering, appointment booking, and burning my fingertips with soldering irons making needles. All in all, coming up the way I did was a wild ride, lots of highs and lows and lots of learning along the way. I’ve only been in the game for five years, so I still feel very fresh and green, every day is still a new opportunity to improve and get better. It’s taken me all over the place and I’ve made so many friendships and memories, I can’t wait to see where it takes me next.
Please tell us about your art.
The majority of my artwork is done with needles to the skin. I paint tattoo designs and do illustrations on the side but 75% of my art diet is tattooing.
My favorite way to create tattoos is simple, readable designs. Bold lines, thin Lines, solid fields of black and saturated color. I do this so because I want you to be able to tell what the tattoo is from across the room, and I want it to stand the test of time, eventually, all the artwork I do is going to die, and there won’t be any more of my artwork walking around anymore, so I want it to look as good as possible for as long as possible.
If there is any message I want people to take away from my art is this:
ARTWORK DOESNT NEED A MESSAGE.
It’s OK to like something just simply because you like the way it looks or it makes you feel a certain way when you look at it. You don’t have to have a deep seeded meaning to every tattoo you get or every piece of art you collect. You can get it because it’s unique or you can get it because it’s a timeless classic, as long as you’re getting enjoyment out of it, it’s serving its purpose.
As an artist, how do you define success and what quality or characteristic do you feel is essential to success as an artist?
As cheesy as it sounds, I think your individual success can only be defined by how happy you are. Everyone has their own opinion of what “making it” or being successful is. I wake up every day and am blessed enough to be able to provide from myself doing something I love to do, that’s a success story in my book.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
That’s the great thing about tattoos, you never know where you might see one. I see people with my tattoos from myself and my colleagues everywhere! At bars and restaurants, at the grocery store, at the gym, etc., it’s really neat when you bump into a tattoo “out in the wild” as we say in the industry. But if you want to view my portfolio and keep up with my travel dates and whereabouts, you can follow me on the social media platform INSTAGRAM under the user name @thaholygoat. I DO NOT have Facebook so don’t even try that one. 😉
But if you REALLY want to support your local artists, the best thing you can do is talk about them to other people. When I first got into tattoo shops, social media wasn’t really a thing for tattooers yet, people had myspace but myspace wasn’t exploding the tattoo industry the way IG is now, to find out who had the sickest tats you had to ask people with sick tats where they got them. Word of mouth is everything. If the IG servers where to crash tomorrow or the internet was on the fritz or something I don’t want to lose my career because people only know about me on social media. So, support your friends and artists by getting tattooed and then showing it off and telling everyone who did it! Pass out business cards, put our stickers up in public places, hang our prints on your wall so your friends can see them. Our clients who rep us the hardest are the ones really our here keeping us fed.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @thaholygoat
Image Credit:
personal photo by Benny Mac
Getting in touch: BostonVoyager is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
