Paul Booth on the Art of Tattoos

Hi everyone and welcome back to the Artalog. Today on the podcast, I'm talking with Paul Booth, a tattoo artist, sculptor, painter, filmmaker and musician who's become synonymous with transgressive and provocative work. Booth has been recognized and inducted into the National Arts Club, the oldest and one of the most respected art institutions in the United States today. In the 1990s, booth's inimitable style led to high demand within the celebrity circuit and he soon became the go-to tattoo artist for top-tier clients such as Slayer, pantera, slipknot, lamb of God, sepultura, cradle of Filth and the stars of the WWE. It was with this enviable client list that Booth found himself one of the most famous tattoo artists in the world. Additionally, demand for his fine art pieces and album artwork grew and with it, the Last Rites brand that Booth has been developing since the late 80s. Booth's flagship project, last Rites Tattoo Theater and Gallery, occupied three stories in Manhattan and was a testament to the creativity and drive of the artist's vision, with each room adorned with a multimedia installation. Paul, welcome to the Art-O-Log.

Hey how you doing.

What are your earliest memories of tattoos?

Hey, how you doing. What are your earliest memories of tattoos? Oh, I always go back to I've been asked this before and I always go back to high school and the bad boy in our high school, the one that was like from the wrong side of town that everyone was intimidated by. He was a big kid, he didn't bother nobody, but he was a bad kid and he had a homemade scorpion tattoo on his forearm, like stick poke and really shitty. And I remember I was a punk rocker at the time, my big Mohawk and my blue hair and everything.

I was, of course, intrigued with tattoos from that time and part of the lifestyle, but I was young, I was 14, 15 years old, whatever and anyway he had this tattoo and I'd look at it and I'd be like I was an artist then too. So I'd look at it and be like God that sucks. If I was going to get a tattoo, I'd get something good. I got to be able to do better than that myself, and then I thought nothing of it. I moved on. That was the only interaction with a tattoo that I had at the time. I'd seen them on people, but not so close. It's a little suburban town I grew up in. I guess when I was 19, I ended up having a kid got my kid's name tattooed on me to help me cope with being a dad at such a young age. I basically just tried to man up as best I could and I guess a tattoo was part of that and I fell in love with the process. That's what got me started in it.

What was the process like? Learning to tattoo by yourself, Actually.

I had an apprenticeship but the guy who tattooed first tattoo ended up being my initial. I was his apprentice for a bit. Old school traditional shop Picket design off what was called the Tattoo Factory in Butler, new Jersey and I scraped up the money for the apprenticeship and I learned how to make needles and do tattoos and everything mop floors and all that stuff. I had a very traditional apprenticeship.

Yeah, so what's an apprenticeship like? When you are learning to tattoo someone?

Well, nowadays it's way different than it was.

And back then you paid for tattoos.

Back then you would like mop the floors, clean the bathrooms, change the ashtrays, make the needles, mop the floors some more, set up tattoo stations for artists. What have you and learn? But it was a lot of grunt work. Like I said, you paid your dues. You had to do all the shitty jobs, but it makes you appreciate it. It's like the difference between getting handed your first car from your dad or your mom and working for it and buying it with your own money. So, it's that mentality that's the old timer mentality.

How did your style develop from the apprenticeship to where you are now?

Freedom developed my style because I started in a street shop. My first three years was there. I'd have to do the designs off the wall so, like the first Tasmanian devil I ever did was my attempt at what it looked like down the wall 5,000 Tasmanian devils later they had ripped veins and fur texture and crazy looking Because I grew from doing 5,000 Tasmanian devils. That carried over when I left that shop I moved out to California and I was out there for about a year and a half and that was the first time in my tattoo time I had no boss telling me how to do what. So I started doing more custom work. I got a job in a shop out in where the hell was.

I North.

LA, santa Barbara, and so I worked in a small shop there and I basically just had the freedom to be able to just do what I wanted. So I drew up my own tattoos and I started customizing more and all the time, because it wasn't a design on the wall anymore, it was what I designed. I went to my first tattoo show and I think it was 91. I started tattooing in 88. The traveling and the freedom to do that is what really grew my style.

in answer to your question, how would you describe your style now?

My style evolves in different ways A lot of times. I'm so wrapped up in developing different techniques for different textures and that sort of thing. So I work in black and gray and stylistically it's very dark and dark-minded stuff demons and monsters and that kind of thing. But more specifically it's about techniques. When I change my techniques, I have different techniques to do different things and it can get complicated. But stylistically my work has always been dark, even before I tattooed. I've always been this way. It's just that my natural. I was a painter before I was a tattooer, so I already had a style before I tattooed and that style carried over into tattooing and continues to carry over to other mediums, like going on, like sculpting and even AI.

What's the process of being tattooed by you now, from start to finish?

Starts with an email. You end up, I think we have a copy-paste sheet that tells you what we need in order to accommodate, and that's like photos of the area to be tattooed, etc. Or some information if you have any ideas and my assistant questions them a bit, makes sure that they're up for giving me the artistic freedom I need to do what I do and ensure that they know my work already, Cause if you don't know my work, you might not be prepared for it.

It can be a little aggressive for some people but at any rate, yeah, it's filtered a little bit.

And then we set up an appointment and we set up a consultation, usually on Zoom, and I talk to them, get to know them as best I can Like an interview about their tattoo and making sure they're serious and schedule them. And then they come here and give me the area we talked about and I just freehand. Most of the time I'd say 99% of the time I have no idea what I'm doing the next day. It's all out of my head.

From my relationship I've developed with the client between Zoom and spending an hour sitting here face-to-face before we tattoo, I have a way of, over the years, working one-on-one with people, I have a way of, over the years working one-on-one with people, I have a way of getting them to relax and trust me a bit. And because there needs to be a level of trust in a tattoo, I don't mean trust me with your life, that would be foolish but trust each other, establish a rapport, I think visually. So when I'm sitting there talking to somebody, I'm just visualizing stuff, what they're saying, what they're thinking. When it comes out on their arm, that's about it. I trust the process.

What does it mean to you as an artist to have your work on someone's body presumably forever?

I never take it lightly. I actually probably put too much pressure on myself as a result, because I don't ever let myself forget that I should always be grateful for the opportunity these people give me. They're wearing my art for the rest of their life, and that's heavy. As an artist. It's a fine line. It's the kind of situation where you have to always remain grateful so you don't become an egotistical prick, but you also have to not think about it, because it depends how much you care really.

I give a shit about what I put on people. If they're going to wear it for the rest of their life, I want it to be the best I can provide. Number one. Number two they're waiting a long time to get in my chair. They're expecting my very best. There's no room for error chair. They're expecting my very best. There's no room for error. Failure is not an option when you're a tattooer, especially one that people are, like hardcore, waiting for to get work from. You want to let them down that kind of sucks and then not care. If you do let them down that sucks even more. Try and just stay in a place where it's. I just just appreciate it. I keep my confidence and I do what I do and I trust the process. I let it happen and I appreciate the trust people give me because I'm objective enough to know that if that stopped that would really blow, because I've become quite used to this.

Why do you think that people are reluctant to recognize tattooing as an art form?

One is the stigma, of course, as I mentioned, coming from criminals and carnival acts, always the frowned upon dregs of society who wanted to tattoo me.

And it's the stigma that's attached to it. Still to this day, the rebels get tattooed because it hurts. It's not something that you're like. Well, why would you do that? You're a mad man, you're crazy. Why would you hurt yourself like this? We ask ourselves every day. Every time I get tattooed, I'm like why am I doing this to myself? And everyone does it, especially in that first five minutes. Oh, I remember. Oh shit, but that's the fun of the whole process, that's the ritual, but at any rate, we're we're outcasts. Artists in general are outsiders most of the time. They're people that can't express themselves easily in words or otherwise, and so they use pictures. They're better with their hands than they are with their mouths. Right, I don't know. I can't speak for every artist in the world, but there's a reason. Artists are the ones that are always crazy. Let's talk about stereotypes. It's true, though, all the great masters were nuts. It's part of it. It's all part of it.

Do you see that stigma changing anytime soon?

I'll tell you something Since tattoo television has come to be. Not to blame it all on that. Society in itself has many problems on its own, more than ever probably. But we live in a strange age, not only in the world, but I mean in tattooing itself. Tattooing is like a microcosm of the world, every walk of life is represented in tattooing.

So the way we intermingle represents a way how the world intermingles. It's all represented here, but it's the type of people that all get along better because we all have something in common. So there will always be some degree of a tattoo family vibe. But I'm probably speaking by some kind of crazy idealist at this point. But but I'm not saying there's some worldwide secret brotherhood. I just mean it's a lifestyle thing and but with all the tattoo television and all that, those shows are all about drama. They're not about tattoo art. So tattooers are being depicted in ways that don't really shine well for tattooing.

The producers are making them act like egomaniacs and hate each other and competitive with each other, and that's not what it was ever about before. Tattooing was never about competition. We're all about the clientele, the collectors. It was for them. The artists enjoyed it. We wanted trophies, sure, because that was our only recognition. We didn't have Instagram. Back then. Competition was important, but it was considered. There wasn't rivalries. Now I see kids crying when they lose and bringing half their clients with them to a show and just showcasing themselves all weekend, and their banners don't even have tattoos on them anymore. It's just their face, little things like that. I see changes. Some are for the better and some are for the worse. Like anything, can you tell?

me a bit about your tattoos, the tattoos that you have on your body, about your tattoos, the tattoos that you have on your body.

Let's see Tattoos tell history. All my pieces are from moments in my life that I look at the tattoos and it brings me back to that moment in my life and all my tattoos are like that. I have a leg that's committed to souvenirs from friends even some ex-girlfriends and I have other art that I was anxious to wear because I respected the artists so much that did the tattoos. So I have pieces that are meaningful to me, like the one on my face is very meaningful to me. The whole process, the journey on that tattoo, was on a whole other level than any other tattoo that I have.

I went into it. I went to one of my mentors, a visionary artist named Felix Liu, who was also a tattooer tattoo family the Liu family and I asked him to design the tattoo for my face. I said I wanted something here and the process was about I had trust issues. At the time. I had bad things happen to me and I had issues with trust. And I went to my mentor and I said whatever you draw, whatever you feel I should wear on my face, I want you to design it. So whatever you feel fits me is right for me is what I'm going to wear.

And that was my forcing myself to trust somebody again. And he ended up drawing up 42 different designs and I had to pick one and it was like, oh, it took me weeks and I'm going through pie and they're all hand-drawn pieces of paper like this big and all over the floor of the apartment. And when I was living in the city and on the walls and we're looking and like he narrowed it down to the one and I sent that one. I told him that was the one I wanted and got excited because he made a second copy of that one, because it was his one too, and I was just like, oh, this was meant to be one. So I jumped on it.

His son philip, who was like my tattoo brother, basically he tattooed it and they both signed it my neck, yeah. So father and son signed it and it was cool. For me, it was very cool experience, because I didn't have a good relationship with my father at all. Doing this with a father-son team like that was a really special experience for me can you tell me a bit more?

what about what it's depicting?

well what it is again, more about the journey than the result, and it's about the only thing I told felix was I like spirals when he asked me, so he developed. It's about the spiral representing spiral theory and spirals in nature, but it's also about representing my right brain, my creative side, so being on the right side of my face, and all it's representing that. It's representing the right brain and the creativity and it's also the commitment to my craft as well.

It's about I'm not going to get a job at a bank now?

I don't think.

I love that. That is such an amazing story. Thanks To pivot to talking about your fine art. Now, when did you start painting and how did you get into it?

I've painted my whole life. My earliest interest was in grade school. I had an art teacher. I went to a Catholic school where I was pretty well tormented and screwed up from. I grew up Catholic in a Catholic school with nuns as teachers, hating for rulers and all that stuff you heard about back in the dark ages. But my art teacher was not a nun and she was nice to me and she encouraged me to draw and she encouraged me and in the sixth grade I won a nationwide poster contest for traffic safety and it was really all because of her and somewhere I got a picture of holding my little poster and like whatever age? I was 10, I don't know but at any rate that was my humble beginnings.

By the time I got to high school I had my own business doing everything from denim jackets for metal heads to I ended up learning airbrush. I taught myself airbrush and developed it to doing murals on hot rods and bikes and tractor trailers and sign painting, all kinds of stuff like that. So I was doing all that acrylic painting. I didn't get into oils much until later on. My mother would send me to some art lessons here and there when she could and I had a painting class or two, but when you're a kid it's hard to get a lot out of that, and so I didn't carry on with the oil painting, but the airbrush is where it went to, and acrylic.

So I was doing all that before I got into tattooing. When I got into tattooing it took over, consumed all my time. So I stopped doing murals and airbrushing and started traveling around the world as a tattoo artist. And then, 15 years later, I got back into painting. When things settled down a little bit, I started oil painting again, and this was in 2000, early 2000s, I'm not sure. Now I got a balance between painting and tattooing. Now it's since I've gotten back into painting I am able to tattoo by day and paint by night.

So many artists have day jobs, but your day job is your art practice too.

Yeah, oh yeah, all I do all day long is make art. I do it from one project to another. I'm what they call a polymath no, I have to say occupied and I have a lot of imagination too much of it and I have to get it out out. I have to get it out in some way. So I have different mediums that I do music, tattooing, painting, clay 3d design, now AI design, learning all that and doing all kinds of things. And yeah, I just jump around the room. It's silly, I get paid to do this. I think's ridiculous.

Do you see the body limiting as a medium compared to other mediums?

No, no, I actually see it beyond that. I see it in the exact opposite way. The thing about the human body when you're dealing with art, the way I am the human body is important. The musculature is part of the art, because the way the tattoo fits the body and homogenizes with it, so to speak, is important. I do large tattoos. I don't just do little decals and stick them on all over the place. I take your whole arm or your torso and or your whole body and design some art that moves when you move and comes alive when you move is the goal. Do my best. If my art has evolved in any way that's the direction it's evolved in is that my work now has more of a flow to it than it ever has, because I focus more on the human body than I ever have the way your bones are structured and your muscles stretches in what direction when you do it. What I do is three-dimensional art. There's light and shade involved in the image, in the artistic image.

So it's three-dimensional images that I'm creating on a three-dimensional surface, that is, the body, and then the art doesn't really come alive until the body moves. So in that sense, it's four-dimensional art. Adding the human body to the recipe of art adds an element that canvas cannot provide, and that's why I think tattooing is special I would have never even thought that you would have to take into account all the ways that the body moves I guess you don't have to.

You can just do a little sticker tattoo and be cool with that. Yeah, pt barnum said there's an ass for every seat.

There's a seat for me too so for your um art style, separate to your tattooing style, do you see the motifs that you're working with change at all or is it similar?

it's hard to say. There's half the tattoo world out there thinks all my shit looks the same and the other half sees past that and sees what I'm trying to do because they look closer at it. I just whatever. Either way, I appreciate that people can see where at least some degree of where I'm going with something.

But I have a very distinct style. The way that I draw faces and noses especially, and my recipe, so to speak, for a demon is a very specific thing. It's a style. Because that's my style and because I really mainly only work freehand, your style comes through in your freehand and you're freehanding. You have a natural tendency to make something a certain way. Recipes like that are required in freehand because if you go on somebody's skin and just start making swirls and turning it into something, of course it's going to be the purest form of your style that there can be, right.

So because I work freehand so much, a lot of people feel there's a lot of similarities because my faces all look like the same kind of whited out eyes and whatnot. But but then when you put them next to each other, it's not so much the case. You see the differences. It's not the same tattoo over and over again. But now I'm playing around a little bit more with stenciling again as part of the process, but in a different way, like putting a stencil on but not really following it, just using it as a rough guide to accomplish some things that I can't do in freehand. So it's like I'm playing with the balance of the two, like I don't just put a stencil on without drawing freehand around it. It's just like certain elements I'll play with and I'm experimenting. And you know what, at the end of the day, to be my age and still experimenting, I can't. I can't bitch about that. I'm happy. I still feel that.

How do you challenge yourself now, 30 years into your career? What challenges you?

The want to reinvent myself and get to my next level is my challenge. I feel a great need to do that because I feel like I haven't done that in a while.

I'm due to get to my next level, but I always feel that way. You have levels in life where you see the matrix a couple times here and there. Those moments that you see the matrix is like the greatest high of your life. So, my god, I get it. Those moments I live for. I need one soon. So, like I experiment until I get, when you get little moments along the way, but essentially I need a nice big one, a moment that's just yes, I got. I got that one figured out. I like that stuff.

Yeah. So in your fine art practice, what sort of themes and motifs do you gravitate towards?

With tattooing, I'm dealing with someone else's demons, so to speak. When I'm painting, I'm dealing with my own. Otherwise, on the technical side and everything else, they're very similar Creatively. At the core, it's all sculpting. To me, whether I'm sculpting in clay, in sound, in tattoo, skin, in oil, paint, canvas, whatever the mental approach to how I develop it three-dimensionally and such is all light and shakes across all the boundaries of all the different mediums, and that's where I tend to live is in that core of that creative process.

And then I just point it in a direction like paint, music, tattoo, and I just sit in the little womb where it's nice and safe, and I just go, okay, paint a little bit, tattoo a little bit, and that's all I do. It's. I want to build someday and I'm going to go off, digress a little bit, but I want to build a giant sphere with stations, where a chair in the middle it all revolves around and each station I can press a button and the painting station will slide in front of me and I can pick it as long as I want. And then I have my master chair. And then I press another button and a tattoo comes around and I tattoo a guy for an hour. Unfortunately he's been hanging upside down for 35 minutes, so he's a little lightheaded, but I'm working on that part. And then another station is a clay sculpture I feel like messing around with. I want to build that. Just a big, crazy contraption.

That's so interesting because that leads into what my next question, or kind of what I'm thinking about right now. Spaces seem to be really important to you for when you're working, so can you tell me a bit about the Last Rites tattoo space and the importance of the ambiance that you create when you're working?

I'd say Last Rites has always been. I've always designed it as basically my inner sanct, like where I want to live, where I'm going to be all day. I want it to be cool, I want it to present, represent, I want it to like, be cozy, and ultimately I've heard over and over again over the years and it always drives me forward is, you know, it's so dark and disturbing, but warm and inviting at the same time. That's what everyone says and that's exactly what it's designed to do, and it's an experiment. It's always been an experiment. All of my studios have been like that, like the wall behind it's. It's all about creating an environment that's conducive to not only creativity itself, but your particular style of creativity. If I was into rainbows and unicorns, I would have clouds on the wall behind me and say the same thing I'm saying right now, and it's happened to be a dark, crazy, old bastard. Of course, I have a wall of skulls on the back of my wall.

But at any rate.

That's the point is. The environment is, for a number of reasons, in a studio, warm tones. You don't see anything really that cold Everything is. The walls are red and black all the time, the lighting is passive and amber and red and dark like an opium den, and soft, dark ambient music is playing in the background and got a vibe to it and it's a very warm, comfortable one. But everything you're seeing are horrific images like disturbed paintings or skulls and reapers and cadavers and what have you. It's all put together a certain way.

Some people like I call them normal people are looking around, wow, but they're intrigued and that's what it's always been about. And then for the clients too, getting tattooed. I used to play metal in the shop all day, but I realized it's not good for the clients. Overall, I found that more creative music is a better environment for tattooing than heavy stuff is, because it gets aggressive and that's cool, to get your aggressions out, jump in the pit and jump around and everything, but like when you're dealing with pain in a tattoo chair and you can't run away. For some people not all, but for some people it gives you more anxiety. You already have enough anxiety from the pain of the tattoo, but everyone's different.

I just I play creative music when I work for me as the artist, not as the client. But my clients don't complain, they like it. It helps them through it.

So yeah, and so in these spaces that you're creating and there's these dark images that people are finding comforting. To me sometimes that feels a little incongruous right To be confronted with death but also be comforted by it. I wonder if you can speak to that.

Oh, you're talking about generally people like me. Again, it's always the outcasts. We weren't the popular chisms. Many artists can say that, but all outcasts. We weren't the popular chisms. Many artists can say that, but all outcasts. They can say that, and we have that in common.

What comes with being the kid that doesn't get picked for baseball is you spend a lot of time alone when you're a loner. And if you're a loner and you don't really like vibe with all the other kids so well like me when I was a kid you sit home and you draw pictures. But another thing happens that you end up with so much time in your head self-reflecting with what's wrong with me or why don't I have any friends or all that shit kids go through. You spend more time looking inward than you do outward and with that comes intuition and with that comes wisdom. And as you get older, people like that tend to be wiser. That's what I believe.

And with that wisdom comes an appreciation for dark things. I think some, because it warms a place in their heart. It almost feeds their demons. It's like throwing a chop to your junkyard dog and keeping them occupied for a while, and I think people like us get that appreciate it. It's the same people that love horror events and movies. There's a lot of people. Everyone has a dark side. Some people embrace it or face it and some people deny it, but everyone has it.

What do you find so compelling about the darkness?

All those things. But also it feels home, it feels safe, it feels what I'm used to. I've always been a very dark guy, dark kid. My earliest childhood memories, from three years old, are dark what the living example of. Too much darkness is not necessarily healthy, but facing it is. So I'm good for telling people like face your demons, but practicing what I preach is a harder thing. I do face my demons every day, but what I mean by that is it's too much. It's my job. I have to face my demons. That's what I do. They can be taxing.

How do you handle that? How do you move forward?

The thing about tattooing is you learn to say goodbye to your art. And with saying goodbye to your art come saying goodbye to those particular demons as well. I don't get closure on a painting until I sell it. Not because of the money, but because now it's someone else's problem. So not really like it's. Now. I got the closure. I've spilled out my demons into this canvas. I vomited out my evil in whatever way I have, and now someone takes it. Whether I give it to them or sell it to them, it doesn't matter, but it goes into someone else's hands.

Then I can move on, and the closure doesn't come yet, dorian Gray.

I was just going to say have you read that book?

Actually, my movie script is inspired by Dorian Gray.

Can you talk about that yet, or is it still? Yes, I could Doesn't matter.

Yeah, it's called To the Grave, like tattoos are the only thing you'll take with you. Play on that. But really I won't get into the whole story. But it's about a girl who is a I don't know. I've never shorthanded this, I've never talked about it. I don't know how much I could say. It's taken me a while. I'm not in a rush, you know I still got to try and get a production house behind it and all that. But it's tattoo related. But it's not unlike any of the other five or six other tattoo horror stories there are out there. This one has its own unique twist on it. This one is has its own unique twist on it and it's built around the whole concept of Dorian Gray and how that whole story went down in a modern tattoo environment Best way I could describe it, without giving anything away.

I'll get better at this, I'm sure, but she, she learns a valuable lesson around vanity All right, cool, I will be looking out for that when the time comes.

That sounds really good.

Thank you, it'll be different, hopefully, if it ever happens. I don't know, I got to do it anyway, get it out of my head. So even if I never sell it, I don't care. At least I've done it.

Yeah, what's your favorite painting that you've done?

This is a tough question for me because I don't really have favorites. I try and answer it without being a pain in the ass. And to answer it without being a pain in the ass, I would say the one behind me in the wall I painted that during lockdown. I was staying in my shop, mainly to protect it. But I was staying at the shop and lockdown came.

We had to shut our doors, close the gate and for three months I lived alone in my shop. I had a shower and a little hidden apartment in there and everything, so it was no big deal. But I did not come in contact with another human being for three months and even the delivery boy for food would leave the food at the door and I'd scurry out like a rat and grab it after he left. And so for three months I was completely solitary in solitary confinement left. And so for three months I was completely solitary in solitary confinement and for some odd reason I decided all right, I want to start a painting, occupy my time, because there was nothing to do and I started a painting and I decided, for some odd reason, to go off my medication because I'm crazy.

so, like I went off my meds and had a very interesting ride with this painting. It was three months of bizarre alone time, but because of that it's resulted as one of my favorite paintings, because of the journey painting it.

It's not really about the results with anything.

It's more about what I went through to do it.

Can you describe it quickly, just for people who are listening?

Oh, it's called Dawn of the New Age and it's a doll, a disturbed looking doll. I don't know what you can see there, actually.

I can see it.

Okay, it's got the coronavirus rising out of its head and a light emanating from the head but at the same time, reflecting down from above. There's a lot of different factors in it the eye in the background, everything represents different things that were very relevant to what was going on. I don't like to say more than that, simply because I'm not looking to spread a message. There's certain elements, a lot of metaphors in it. Dawn of the New Age is about.

I realized right away during the shutdown, the lockdown this was going to change the world forever. Clearly, it was clear we were in the beginnings of a pandemic and it was a scary time, very intense, and, being in new york, I had friends dying only two, but two's, two too many really and it was a freaky time. All I'm looking to do is move you emotionally and you'll get out of it. What you'll get out of it like. I had a painting that I did called icarus syndrome, and it's like a moth-like flying baby. Basically, and at any rate, achilla, icarus syndrome was about always trying to touch the sun, always getting burned, always falling down and always getting back up and always trying to touch sun again and never learning a goddamn lesson. That's what it meant to me, and that's fine. That's what it meant to me.

And I had this girl standing in tears in front of it because it reminded of her grandfather who was dying of alzheimer's not even closely related to my message, but I realized in that moment it's not about my message, I have my message from it. You have your own. You interpret it the way you want to interpret it, good or bad, but if I'm getting you to look to interpret it, that's the win.

As I said yeah, I think that's a great message and that's what art should be about.

I think so, I think so.

As an artist and also a gallerist. How is balancing these very different roles within the art world?

Oh, I've given up. I walked away when I closed the shop after lockdown, covid killed me. Business that part of it anyway. Relief though really being in New York was no easy task. I had 5,000 square feet in Midtown, it was no joke. I was relieved when I closed, but at any rate, not being able to open your doors for months with the rent. I had forget it. After three months of that, I'm like, see ya, I had forget it. After three months of that, I'm like see you. But at any rate, I had to close galleries and the studio and it was hard. It brought a tear, it was difficult to do, but the stress relief I've got my art back.

The thing about it was it consumed me. It was like I had to be a businessman all the time. It was hard to keep my art going, my frame of mind. I had too much stress and not enough peace and it really affected. Plus, I had people who I was working with that were toxic, toxic to the environment, sabotaging things. I went through a lot of bullshit. I miss discovering artists and showing them to people that were fans of the gallery. I really miss that.

It was fun the thing about Last Rites Gallery and Booth Gallery as well, but Last Rites in particular. The thing about it was that when I said everyone has a dark side, I meant it because my gallery openings would have every different type of person there attending that you could imagine and everyone got along great. I one time had a casket in my office, a sofa. I had a pad on the top and it was just a casket that I turned a coffin, that I turned into a sofa and I had the president of the National Arts Club in New York, 110-year-old institution, sitting on my casket on one side of it and the president, head of a major gang in New York City, sitting next to him and the both of them talking about a painting they both like. And I looked at that and I said I'm sitting in my chair like I am right now and I'm just going see, that's what I'm saying. It's no problem, man, they both like.

And I looked at that and I said I'm sitting in my chair like I am right now and I'm just going see, that's what I'm saying. It's no problem, man, people get along if they just have a common bond, and appreciating something they know most people don't appreciate tends to bring them together. And last, rights was always known for that. That's what I miss the most, but I don't miss the bullshit. I'll tell you I'm paying my ass off again. I got a new body of work that I'm doing. I'm tattooing full time. I'm having a blast. Now that whole world could kiss my ass at this point.

Yeah, that's so funny. What have been some career highlights for you?

I always looked up to Giger and if you look at my tattooing you'll see a heavy influence from Giger, especially in tattooing Not necessarily in my painting, but in my tattooing for sure. And he asked me to show in his museum my work back in 2004. I can't remember which year it was, but I showed it at the museum and it was amazing. It was like to go from sitting in my art room looking at a Giger calendar and trying to emulate him. He's the one who inspired me to airbrush in the first place. It was like going full circle. Showing it at his museum and him respecting my art enough to show it on his walls was like wow, what can I say? It's an honor beyond words. That was a major career Highlight doesn't even describe it. Another one is in tattooing. I sat in my tattoo room when I first started listening to Slayer while I tattooed and I remember saying to my clients.

Someday I'm going to tattoo Slayer. I'm a little kid now, but like Kerry King's one of my best friends, I've tattooed the shit out of him, so it's like another full circle. Silly things sometimes, but I don't know, a lot of things have gone full circle.

Were there ever any moments that you were unsure of your path or felt like you'd failed, and how did you move on from these moments?

Okay, three parts to that. I've never doubted my path. I have nothing but confidence and zero doubt in the path I've chosen. However, failure I deal with every day. Why? Because I'm a perfectionist and I'm hypercritical of myself.

To a very fault.

And it shows in my art because I beat myself up all day Like a painting, for me, is like a roller coaster. It's like an emotional roller coaster because it's all obsessive, it's all obsession from start to finish. It goes from psyched, happy, inspired oh shit, I'm screwing it up, oh no, oh I screwed it up. Oh, it's over. I suck. I'm a terrible artist. I'll never fix this. I'm going to just burn it. Oh wait, I might've saved it. Wait, hold on a second. Oh wait. Okay, that looks good. All right, though, and it goes up and down, but at levels normal humans can't handle, so it's whoa. That's why the closure doesn't really come, until I get rid of the fuck, because it's oh my God, you drove me insane.

Get away from me. Where do you see your career going in the future?

saying get away from me, where do you see your career going in the future? Um, the retirement shit. I'm 56. I'm looking to get a place in the country with a guest house for my clients, and I want to pick up my people at the airport and hearse, drive them out to booth farm or booth compound would be more like it and tattoo them for a long weekend kind of thing like a weekend getaway, a horror retreat, so like the rooms are all themed horror movies, like the exorcist room and a bed and breakfast kind of scenario. That's how I'd like to retire just scaring the shit out of my clients every day, sneaking in the room at three in the morning and scaring the shit out of them making them day. Sneaking in the room at three in the morning and scaring the shit out of them, making them sign a release to stay with me, the whole thing. That's where I wanted to go.

Yeah, you should have a Suspiria room that would be a good one, absolutely yeah, that would be good.

What advice would you have for artists looking to pursue a career in the arts?

What I see in the youth today, not to be a grumpy old man or anything, but in tattooing anyway, I see a lot more ego-driven artists. I see more and more artists that are all about being a rock star rather than just making art for the sake of their art. My advice would be to, if you're genuine about it. Don't worry about fame and fortune and notoriety and TikTok video views and Instagram posts Do what you got to do?

but focus on being the better artist, Because all of that will come if you become the better artist. You don't need to fluff everything with bullshit in order to get ahead, your art will speak for itself. And maybe that all sounds cliche, but by age, that's what I've learned as long as. I stay true to my art. Everything else will come. It's insignificant.

That's great advice, paul. Thank you so much for being on the show. Yeah, sure, happy to be here.