We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lindsay Carter. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lindsay below.

Lindsay, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

First and foremost, to simply be here inhaling and exhaling is to be successful in my eyes. To then challenge yourself to expand beyond personal thresholds is an additional feature. To be a prosperous creative or dreamer, I think takes deep devotion and a nagging curiosity to explore possibility and potential. It takes constant self-inquiry and a core belief that you can achieve some form of what you want. Measuring success is a very personal journey. The word “success” in a business or career is often intertwined with material achievements within this society. I don’t think success is dependent on the material unless you want it to be. Continuously assessing that your definition is built upon your own principles and not defined by outside forces keeps the relationship with success healthy and true to you. Being available to show up and put yourself out there, are all foundational steps. It’s both an openness and a precision to not falter from your integrity. Following the road to your own versions of success is a form of surrender to where you might end up along the way. To keep yourself focused on what it is you’re doing, who you’re doing it for, its impact, why you’re doing it, and where you’re eager to go, is staying connected to your original roots as you continue to shape and grow. I personally think there are multiple successes along the way in some greater vision one might have, and it’s important not to miss them. Celebrate them, be present for them, no matter how big or small, they are all important and part of the whole.

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?

Painting, drawing, and sculpting are realms I’ve turned to and felt natural in since I was a child. I didn’t know what my career would be until I got tattooed by an artist who shared her becoming story with me. After that encounter, it became real to me that I could follow this path. I worked at a pizzeria in my hometown as a teenager to save up money to fund my tattoo education. I started professionally tattooing at age 19. I commuted two hours roundtrip to that pizzeria during my education and in the beginnings of my career for guaranteed income. I did that until I was busy enough and courageous enough to leap into to the unknown and let tattooing try to support me, my rent, and bills. I tattoo full-time now in Portland, Oregon. I’m grateful for that ambition almost 10 years ago to dream and to try. And I’m deeply grateful to everyone along the way that showed up with support and encouragement.

I experience the movement and colors of the natural world vividly and dramatically. I grew up in Oregon near groves and forests and was swooned by my mom’s garden. Sensitive to the micro worlds around me even as a kid, I’ve zoomed in and zoned out on textures and shapes of all that is intricate and finite in our natural world. From the Earth’s soil, to its leaves, to the trees intricate root systems, to the flower petals, seeds, worker ants and bees. My relationship with the natural world as a solace and muse has become the main character of my visual art interpretations. Of course nature naturally became what I tattoo. I love tattooing flowers, plants, animals, insects, and so on. It has felt meaningful to me to honor our non-human kin. And in showcasing them, maybe an attempt to give them a louder voice. A reminder to humans of their presence and importance here with us.

Tattoos are potent stuff. A transformative process not only physically and somatically, but sometimes emotionally and spiritually. They can be simple and meaningless adornments for our bodies or deeply sentimental and initiating. This work can be healing and liberating for many people in relation to their personal power, bodies, and/or their grief. So in that way, being a tattooer is not exactly like being a painter, who only relates with self, paint, and a canvas. The canvas here is a whole complex and sentient human being. I feel responsible for not only the quality of work I put on a person’s body, but the experience provided. A tattoo is a time capsule directly linked to the memory of who our artist was and how that experience went. However that experience was, that specific tattoo becomes a permanent reminder of that. It’s crucial to me to respect clients in their body autonomy and provide a comfortable space. With my work, I strive to show up for clients not only as an artist, but as someone present with them, and respectful of them and their needs within the process.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

It’s all about connection for me. The butterfly effect of how our creative contribution ripples out in the world is a thrilling mystery. It’s the most rewarding to me to feel I have some sort of purpose and role to contribute. I feel honored to be in the craft of tattooing, weaving connections through creation with an art form that’s so beyond. Being a tattooer is soulfully rewarding because of the way it relates with others. Tattoos are alive. They live on you and with you wherever life brings you. It’s high pressure and the amount of trust people give me to alter their body is humbling. That level of surrender is something I’ll forever admire from clients, especially when I’m meeting them for the first time in the tattoo chair for many hours. There’s purpose in assisting someone in achieving their vision, and especially when the subject of design is what they connect to on visceral levels. It’s also really special to build long-standing client-artist relationships where we get to see each other and creating new pieces throughout cycles and seasons. Tattoos are a healing process for many of us through times of transition. It’s incredible to witness and provide space for a person in their healing, personal initiations, or even celebrations. To be a little stop along the way in another’s transformation is personally transformative.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I’m not always on. This gets particularly interesting when your full-time job is creating. It has taken me many moons to recognize a dry spell coming on and adjust accordingly. I require down time and grace with myself to continue having access to flow. And if I’m resisting the ebb, it aches so much. To confine the creative process into a linear format with daily content, or to the rules of a machine in production, is quite unnatural to the cycles in which every creative has to surrender to. Know that every creative is dancing to their own personal rhythms with ebb and flow. Were pulling from invisible creative forces in the ether, and it’s not always in our control when we get that supply.

Contact Info:

• Website: Lindsayrae.art
• Instagram: Lindsayrae.art
• Facebook: Lindsayraetattoo

Image Credits
Portrait taken by photographer Krista Mupo