We were lucky to catch up with Jessica Canvas recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jessica, appreciate you joining us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

When I was around 5 years old my grandfather noticed I had a love for art and really wanted to nurture that aspect of my life. I was always drawing, painting, and kind of getting my hands on any materials I could to try new things. Around the time I was 12 or so I saw my first tattoo, it was a helmet with a sword going through and I remember thinking how cool that would be to create something so permanent. Jumping forward several years I landed an apprenticeship in tattooing when I was 16 and I never really looked back.

Jessica, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Getting into this industry is not for the faint of heart, I got a portfolio together and tattoo designs, fine art, different mediums, and then scoured the city looking for an apprenticeship. I was still in High School at the time so it was a bit tricky to get everything moving but after my like.. twelfth studio I finally got noticed by an artist that liked my work and they decided to take a chance on me. Since I was still so young I couldn’t legally tattoo so mainly I built machines, learned how to make my own needles, cleaned alot, and took in whatever knowledge I could.

I got fully licensed when I turned 21, from there I tried a little bit of everything. I moved around to different studios, tried a variety of different tattoo styles until years later I landed in mainly doing illustrative lady heads and mythical creatures. I find my style to be a bit of a mix of neotrad and illustrative, but the genres I mainly focus on are fantasy, dark art, and the human form.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Really my goal is to create a safe and fun environment for myself and my client while also giving them a tattoo that can tell a story. The best part of my job is getting to create something based off of a client’s mind, whether it be really vague or incredibly detailed.
Im also in the works on opening my own tattoo studio and hope to create a healthy culture for my artists and piercers alike so we can all look forward to being at work each day and thrive off each other.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When I first got into tattooing it was a heavily dominated male industry. I was told no all the time and that I’d prob never really amount to anything further than your standard walk in artist or that I’d probably quit cause the industry was “too hard” for a woman. In my eyes that was just a challenge to be better and prove those people wrong. I gave up on having a social life for a majority of my teens and 20’s so I could live and breathe this career. Being “good enough” will never be good enough for me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://tattoocloud.com/jessicacanvas
• Instagram: @jessicacanvas_tattoo
• Facebook: Jessica Canvas