The Skin Deep
Inside the ink of artist Ellie Rubincam
Ink Runs Deep — Tattoo artist Ellie Rubincam reflects on the depth and meaning of her clients' ink. Every piece has an incredible story to tell. Jeff Pew Photo
Tattoos, the old-school skin art, have been leaving their mark on us for thousands of years across different corners of the globe. In ancient Egypt, tattoos date back over four thousand years, serving as suspected spiritual rituals and amulets for protection. In Japan, tattoos were all about showcasing one's social status and significant life moments through large-scale motifs based on intricate irezumi designs. The ancient Polynesians turned tattoos into a rite of passage, a cultural journey with the inking process lasting up to an excruciatingly three to four months, demonstrating one’s heritage, social status, and ability to withstand pain.
More recently, 20th-century North American tattoo history was associated with sailors, bikers, and outlaws. There was the stereotypical suntanned arm, beneath a white T-shirt, adorned with a grass-skirted dancer, a woman in tight shorts at a ship’s wheel, and the ubiquitous homage to “Mom.” During the last twenty years, our perception and attitudes around tattoos shifted from symbols of rebellion and defiance to self-expression and personal identity. They became a recognized art form, just as graffiti and tag art became more mainstream. In addition, the visibility of celebrity tattoos played a crucial role in making tattoo culture more fashionable. Celebrities like Drake, David Beckham, and Angelina Jolie flaunted and hyped their ink, normalizing tattoos for the masses. And finally, tattoo technology got slicker, making the process safer, faster, less painful, and more precise. Today, tattoos tell stories: they're the inked diaries expressing who we are, what we value, and what we've been through.
Since 2016, Kimberley’s Ellie Rubincam has been illustrating and inking our lives’ narratives. She specializes in illustrative tattoos with a focus on fine-line work that flows with the lines of the body. Ellie’s tattooed over a thousand people, and often forms deep connections with her clients.
“When I began tattooing, I thought people came for tattoos because they were looking to have art on their bodies,” she reflects. “Now I believe we get tattoos because we want to honour a transition and potential transformation in our lives. We get them at beginnings and endings, to remember, to re-orient, to choose ourselves again.” Ellie thinks tattooing is a ritual that people subconsciously understand. “The stories that come up in the creation of a tattoo stem from our deep yearnings for connection and acceptance. I love that I have this window that allows me to see people exactly as they are.”
In the following vignettes, Ellie muses on six of her clients’ tattoos and the stories lying beneath their skin.
G.
We immediately bond over a shared love of Arthur Rackham’s illustrations, a Victorian illustrator who drew faeries so fluidly that it seems improbable he never drew them from life. She is a sweet-faced 18 years old, but simultaneously, ageless: she could be 80 as easily as 34 or 8. She lists bands her parents were too young to see in concert. She holds a steady job, pays her own way, and keeps an eye out for her younger brother. It’s been two years since she was last in foster care.
We line the piece first, illuminating a scene pulled together with three of Rackham’s faeries and a gnarled old tree from a different text. The faeries look unconcerned with the world beyond the forest as I add a soft layer of colour over certain sections: a dress becomes tinged with hints of orange, pink, and blue. When it heals, it will be subtle, like the picture is blushing.
At one point, I wonder: how does an eighteen-year-old get this good at forgiving?
After each session, she takes the bus home.
E.
9:30 am: E. comes in the cold. I can tell she’s nervous: it’s been 15 years since her last tattoo. She shows me the faint outline of a peacock feather curving up the side of her stomach. Between then and now, so many chapters: moving towns, the eyes-wide-open decision to have a child after thinking she never would, the dissolution of a partnership.
She says, “I left because I felt like a wilting flower.”
She speaks of her love of foraging and plants, how she hopes her bees have made it through this cold snap. The bumblebee is for her daughter, she tells me, a nickname from when she was born. The wild rose is medicine for the heart.
Before she leaves, she turns to me with something in her hands. “I made this for you,” she says. It’s a deer antler, a few feathers, and a silver chain with charms dangling from the bone. After she leaves, I hold the gift in both hands. I wonder for too long about where it belongs.
T.
I’ve been looking forward to this tattoo for months: a girl’s head melting into a birdcage; a couple of the bent bars allowing the kept birds to escape. In the week leading up to the drawing, I become fascinated by how I want to portray her: innocent and vaguely from the ‘60s. I’m unaware of the symbolism of the piece.
I’ve been told I’ll like T. Within minutes of entering the studio, he begins telling the story of his upbringing. He was raised Mormon — yet always knew he was gay — and sent to conversion therapy as a teenager. Fast forward to the present day and things have really worked out for T: the job, the husband, the supportive network of like-minded people. All of it.
The piece begins to take shape. I tattoo the girl’s face, striving to keep her looking naive. On a scale this small, the wrong shade of grey in your whip shading can change the entire feeling. He tells me about the pressure growing up to constantly minimize the feminine. The bars of the birdcage begin to appear.
When he gets ready to leave, I want him to stay. I want him to promise to tell kids born in families like his about how much better it gets.
A.
“Looking for birth flowers for my four children,” she writes in her email. “Birth flowers among the weeds, because something beautiful and light came from years of darkness.” A. married as a teenager into a community that saw girls primarily as wives.
Then, she left.
We discuss each weed as I draw it on. “Why milkweed?” I ask her.
“Reminds me of growing up on a cattle farm,” she says. “The cows would eat it and it would change the taste of their milk. Eventually, the pods split open, revealing a fluffy white material called coma that allows the seeds to disperse on the wind.”
Her smile wants to be bigger than she lets it. Soon we’re laughing. While still in my chair, she hatches a plan to open her basement to youth leaving her old community for simple meet-ups. It’ll be a way to show these kids that they’ll be okay, offering a place to land, the way a burr comes to land on the softest sweater.
S.
I’ve never met anyone with a rain machine before, or someone who says, “Covid wrecked my tips. With the mask, no one could see my smile.” S. is the best friend you wish you had. She’s getting a thigh piece that curves up her hip, ornate carving in a ram skull surrounded by flowers. It’s for an untamed childhood, her and her sister running barefoot through the fields of her parents’ farm. We talk art, her photography. The tension of showing up for family while keeping the creative spark lit. What do you need to give up? What do you keep for yourself?
I can picture S. as a little girl: no one knew her heart could break so easily because of how she burst into a room. How maybe the most alive people feel more pain because they feel everything more. How she set up a rain machine in her garage, too impatient to wait for the weather to change.
C.
During the tattoo, she updates me on dating. She tells me about the cook who lured her to a different town, then never left the kitchen where she worked. If given the slightest opportunity, she would flirt with your dog.
In my six years of tattooing, I’ve learned that the act of being tattooed has its own unique impact, above and beyond the specific image someone chooses to get. Call it a ritual, call it an act of self-love. C. gets flash pieces the way other people choose between brands of crackers.
We meet each Wednesday as part of a breakfast club at our local diner, so I know about her dad. I know about the night he grabbed the gun from the case, and how her nephews were sleeping in the guest room. I know that every day she chooses sweetness, makes homemade chocolates for the local chocolate shop, a piece of ginger in this one, another painted with a ribbon of gold: each of them a love note to a stranger in her town.
You can see more of Ellie’s work on Instagram at @coalfeather.
~ Intro & Photos by Jeff Pew
~ Vignettes by Ellie Rubincam
Find this full-length story and more in The Trench’s Summer + Fall 2024 edition: