With his shaved head, triathlon-sculpted muscles and Japanese-styled tattoos, Paul Timman looks more like a rock star than a celebrated artist. The truth is, he’s both.
“Being a tattoo artist is the next best thing to being a rockstar because, A) you get to hang out with rock stars, and B) they treat you like a god, because they want you to do good work on them,” Timman says with authority. he’s appeared in VH1’s All Access, A&E’s The Star Treatment, and even the True Hollywood Story: Pamela Anderson. At Sunset Strip Tattoo in Los Angeles, Timman tattooed celebrities such as Angelina Jolie and Ben Affleck—the Wall Street Journal called him “The Rembrandt of Sunset Strip.”
LA’s ink master is a native Northwest Ohioan. He found his first inspiration here: “When I lived in Perrysburg I used to go out back […] dig up the ground and make things out of clay,” Timman said. He also, like many local young people, attended art classes at the Toledo Museum of Art. On December 5, Timman will step onto local soil again to lecture at the Toledo Museum of Art, in conjunction with their Fresh Impressions exhibit. But enough about his return—this is the story of his departure.
Young, Broke, & Pissed Off
Timman spent his young adulthood in Toledo not behind an easel, but on top of a skateboard, wearing a pair of headphones. “Everyone met up downtown at what used to be called Portside just to skateboard. There were great places to skate in Toledo. The Curve, The Banks, in Maumee and downtown,” Timman says.
The soundtrack to his rebellion? Punk and hardcore—fast and mean rock—by nonconformists for nonconformists. In the late 80’s and early 90’s that scene boomed in Northwest Ohio, where Timman had a front row seat. “I saw Fugazi play during the daytime at the Toledo Masonic Hall [now the Stranahan Theater]. They held it in the lobby, they stood on this little stage made of boxes right by the front door!”
Rock music and tattoos often go hand in hand, and naturally Timman’s involvement in the hardcore scene led him to ink. “As everybody got older […] I ended up wanting to get tattooed because it was the scene and that’s what people did,” Timman said.
After graduating from high school in 1990, Timman’s passion for ink followed him to the prestigious Cleveland Institute of Art, where he intended to study sculpture. There, his artistic hunger increased, though his coffers shrank. “We painted on whatever we could, we painted on sheets of plywood lying around because it was cheaper than canvas. If I found some drywall sitting around, I would take it to paint on.” His appetite for tattoos also grew. “Being a young college student I was broke, I never had any money, but any time I got birthday money or Christmas money, I got a tattoo.”
His transition from tattoo enthusiast to artist came almost by accident, when a friend asked Timman to ink him. “One of my colleagues at school had some equipment, so I ended up tattooing a bunch of people in college and it just sort of clicked. It wasn’t what I set out to do. I just was having a field day with it.” When Timman returned to Toledo he worked at Toledo Tattoo, the oldest studio in the area.
Going Out West
Timman tattooed in Toledo for less than a year before trekking to Los Angeles with a friend. The pair slept in a Target parking lot for two weeks.
He took his portfolio to Sunset Strip Tattoo. The world-renowned parlor that has inked some of Los Angeles’s most notorious rockers; gold records hang on the walls there, mementos from the LA Guns, Motley Crue and Guns N’ Roses. Timman says, “I knew my work wasn’t ‘Los Angeles good’, but I knew I could get there. At Sunset, one of the guys there slipped a business card into my portfolio. The card said ‘I might have a job for you, keep it quiet.’” When someone left the studio, Timman filled the empty chair.
He says working one year through Sunset Strip’s incredibly high traffic is the equivalent of working three years at any other parlor. Timman works like a classic tattoo artist, sketching and designing his work in pencil, inking the designs in one sitting, then coloring the work in over time. No computers necessary.
Heritage
HeritageTimman’s process mimics that of the Japanese printmakers whose work he so often emulates. His fascination with Japanese prints began in college. “What drew me to it was that I like the aesthetics of it, and the way that it lays on the body.” he says, “The stuff lends itself perfectly to tattooing, you could not ask for better images […] it’s timeless, it always looks good whether its male or female and all the design elements lend themselves to being unisex.”
He has mastered an Americanized take on traditional Japanese tattooing. Though he’s never been to Japan, he has his own interpretation of the style. “My dragons look different, and my backgrounds are a little looser.” He learned Japanese tattooing through books, and by doing digital research.
Timman is also quick to point out that he knows many styles besides Japanese. “I also tend to really enjoy traditional Americana tattoos—the sailor tattoos of anchors, naked women and daggers through skulls. I also love traditional tribal tattoos,” specializing in authentic South Pacific styles, often drawn—inauthentically—in America. “When I say tribal I’m not talking about the guy that was a Sigma Chi and went and got an arm band—that’s a silly bastardized tribal thing.”
The styles that interest Timman have an element of tradition, or a longstanding cultural thread. “Everything I enjoy doing is because there is some base, or merit behind it,” he says, echoing the hardcore punk ethos that art should be honest, and true to one’s roots—a lesson learned in Lucas County. “I like that there’s a story behind the tribal tattoos, they deal with specific stories of people and tribes.”
Fishing in the Mainstream
After creating a name for himself at Sunset Strip, Timman was approached by InkDish, a designer tableware company, and asked to design a line of tattoo-inspired dinnerware pieces. “I didn’t want only people with tattoos to relate to it. I wanted grandmas to like it, I wanted parents to buy it for their kids in college. […] My idea was to bridge the gap between tattooed society and regular society,” he says.
Timman’s dalliance with mainstream design paid off—his Irezumi line of products was named in Metropolitan Home’s Design 100 list in 1999. The Irezumi products showcase traditional Japanese Koi (carp) and Ryu (dragons), both rendered in serene, crisp blue lines.
The success of Irezumi, however, may indicate a sea change—tattoos, once a point of outsider pride, now swim in the mainstream. A 2012 Harris Poll showed that one in five American adults now have a tattoo, and the number is rising. Tattoos are becoming part of normal life—and Timman doesn’t like it.
“When I first started getting tattoos, if my friends and I were walking down the street and we had on a wife beater or no shirt, and there was a mother with her kids […] they would go to the other side of the street,” Timman relates. “Nowadays if I walk down the street and there’s a mother with her kid, she will say ‘look honey, look at all of this man’s pretty tattoos.’ It’s totally different and I don’t like that.” For Timman, the transgressive nature of body art is an intrinsic part of its charm. “I liked that tattoos were different and they put me on the outside edge of society. Now, I wear long sleeves all the time, I don’t want people to know I’m tattooed and I don’t want to talk about it with people, because it’s not the same.”
The irony is, by becoming an acclaimed designer, inking celebrities and appearing on reality television, Timman has actually been responsible for bringing ink further into the public eye. But rather than watering down his art for TV ratings, he keeps the art relevant in the commercial world. “I have done my best to project tattooing in a positive form,” he said. “The shows out there don’t have any credibility, they’re doing it all for the money,” he says. Timman insists that quality is his first concern, certainly above money and notoriety.
Caring about quality and heritage has taken Timman from being a street boarder and punk rocker in Toledo, to being a star artist in Los Angeles. Timman credits his success to one ethos: “if you take care of tattooing, tattooing will take care of you.” His life experiences, formed as a young artist in Toledo, have led him to closely intertwine his art and his life. In fact the subject of his lecture will be the symbiotic relationship between art and life. In Timman’s case, he’s literally made art a part of his body—and has focused his life on doing the same for other people.
Timman will speak as part of the TMA’s Master Series on Thursday, December 5, at 6pm. The Peristyle, Toledo Museum of Art,
2445 Monroe St. 419-255-8000. toledomuseum.org. Free.
