May 2022 Luminance Exhibit link
Thea Duskin (American, 1978- ) is an internationally exhibited mixed media artist who has been tattooing professionally since 1998. She specializes in the adaptation of mixed media and watercolor botanical painting into tattoos. She co-owned Ghostprint Gallery, in Richmond, VA until 2015, when she relocated to her hometown of Buffalo, NY, and is a resident artist at The Parlour of Buffalo.
Artist Statement:
Watercolor has become my preferred painting medium for its immediacy and translucence. It has a spontaneity and finality impossible with other materials which invite multiple sessions of layering at the risk of overwork. Trying to capture Nature’s ephemeral beauty is well served by the organic flow of watercolor. I grew up surrounded by both art and science, which synthesized for me into botanical studies. While I love the accuracy of botany’s documentation, I pushed into abstraction a bit further, to allow more play between art and reality. Although the application is quite different, and more akin to tromp l’oeil, in my professional work as a tattoo artist, I strive to unify my work’s appearance, cross media, making tattoos that look like paintings.
Selected Exhibitions:
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, Germany
Gewerbemuseum, Winterthur, Switzerland
Aqua Art Miami, Miami, Florida
Valentine Museum, Richmond, Virginia
Mutter Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
University of Houston, Clear Lake, Texas
Gallery Oder 24, Berlin, Germany
Revolution Gallery, Buffalo, New York
Eric Schindler Gallery, Richmond, Virginia
Sacred Gallery, New York, New York
Quirk Gallery, Richmond, Virginia
(e)Merge Art Fair, Washington, DC
Box Gallery, Buffalo, New York
Canvas LA, Los Angeles, California
ADA Gallery, Richmond, Virginia
Selected Publications:
BBC Culture, “Tattoos: 150 Years of Body Art.”
Margot Mifflin, “Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo,” CMYK magazine.
Ghostprint Gallery link
Instagram link
