Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Christopher Hedlund. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Christopher, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
I get asked pretty regularly if I’ve always been an artist, especially as a kid. Technically yes, but I have always been a musician. My first job was working in the tobacco fields when I was 13. (Yay loose child labor laws and under-the-table farmers in NC!) I would stay with my grandmother during the summer and go to work with her in the tobacco field at 5am every weekday. I was making $350 a week as a 13 year old during the summer harvesting months. The first thing I did with that money was buy my first guitar and amp and have been playing ever since.
Most of my teens and 20s were spent buying gear, learning new instruments, and playing in bands. I’ve played in several bands over the years. A couple even had some notoriety, signed to a label, toured, etc. – In my mid 20s though, I realized that I needed to actually be able to make a living on my passions. If I wanted to continue to dress and look the way I wanted, have control over my life, and not be stuck in an office/cubicle and under a boss; I needed to pivot.
I was always drawn to tattooing and had several before I got into doing them. I had had an unsuccessful apprenticeship when I first tried to start tattooing at 19 and wasn’t able to get back to it until I was 25. When I quit music (and by that I mean playing in bands. You never quit music) I started taking drawing and painting classes at the local community college to grow my visual art skills and actually have what I needed to offer a shop to secure an apprenticeship. I needed particular drawing and art knowledge for a shop to see the advantage of teaching me how to tattoo. One of the hardest parts of getting an apprenticeship, and the apprenticeship model in general, is that you’re literally teaching someone to be your eventual competition. The mentor has to see teaching this person to be a net benefit for the shop, as a whole. And also, proving that you really want this and have already put in the time toward being good at this job you want.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am a professional color realism tattoo artist in Austin, TX. I started tattooing 16 years ago. At this point in my career, I specialize in only realistic imagery. I don’t do the kind of work with a heavy black outline anymore. My main focus in this style has been toward longevity. When you don’t use a black outline, you have to make other specific decisions in the design and tattoo process to make sure that the tattoo is going to hold up in the long term against the sun. While we advise our clients to always be on the sunscreen train, you can’t always trust they will. I always have that in my mind when I’m putting together the artwork, but also in how I choose to apply the tattoo and the ink choices I make.
I have done a lot of floral work in the past and always welcome new pieces in that vein, but I’ve been trying to move toward focusing more on people portraiture, landscapes, and animals (pets and wildlife) in my more current work. If I were to design exactly what I wanted to do in an artistic direction, it would definitely be in the surrealism world. In that style the imagery looks realistic in nature, but the subject matter is just a little bit weird, unnatural or… surreal. Think of the imagery of the classics like Salvador Dali and Hieronymus Bosch or more current work of artists like Greg (Craola) Simkins and Jon Ching.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
As much of a bummer as Social Media is, being able to have a successful online reach is one of the most beneficial things for an artist in our current economy. So if you want to help an artist: following, sharing, liking, commenting and just generally being engaged in their social media content is literally the best way to help us.
In the art world, the basic premise of people knowing you exist is the most important thing there is. It doesn’t matter how great your work is or how much you stand out from everyone else, if no one knows you even exist. So putting in all of this hard work toward making your art as good as you possibly can means nothing if you can’t get it to the people that would appreciate it, buy it, or book with you.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
FREEDOM! I have so much freedom in my life, in so many aspects, that I don’t even realize on the regular. My fiancé works a corporate job and since the pandemic has been working from home. Through that, I’ve gotten a small insight into what that world is like. I’ve never even worked a corporate job. I’ve worked in an office/cubicle twice in my life and both were very short lived. I don’t even know what it’s like to have to look for a job. I’ve never used LinkedIn and am not totally sure how it even works. I don’t have a resumé. I’ve never had to go through a “round of interviews.” I hear her talking to her peers and I have to ask regularly what different widely accepted acronyms between themselves stand for.
Sure, there are setbacks, like a lack of benefits or retirement, but I can control that by how I choose to use my income. I did not have health insurance as an adult until last year. Even then, that was only by being able to join onto her benefits as a domestic partner. I am currently 41 years old.
Being able to run my own business, own my shop, and completely control how much time I spend at or not at work has been the best part of being an independent artist. The work/life balance portion has been the thing I’ve taken the most advantage of in the later portion of my career.
Contact Info:
- Website: winterhalo.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/winterhalo
- Tiktok: wintehalotattoo