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| A little background information about Me... I started life as Stacey Keys. I was an odd little girl, even though my parents say otherwise. Maybe it was me, maybe it was other people, maybe it was 8 years of Catholic schooling... but I never felt as if I was meant to fit in. So, I drew. Both of my parents were artists so I started drawing when I was very young. I drew on everything including furniture, walls, the street, myself and my friends... (Do you know how many times I got lectured about ink poisoning?)My mom was a great help in teaching me a lot of the basics of art while my sisters encouraged me and my fathers constructive criticism helped me to focus on what I was doing right as well as wrong. When I got to high school I took a few art classes here and there and then entered a graphic arts program rather than strictly art classes (which I could kick myself for now...) but it was fun. :) After graduation
I needed to find something to do with my life... Starting out, I had many close and understanding friends who stood in line to get work and one wonderful boyfriend who later became my husband. He's the owner of the second tattoo I ever did and it was his first. It's actually his fault that this site is named as such. I married into the perfect last name for this profession- Sharp. :D Our son Ian was born in 1994 and is my pride and joy. He's turning out to be an excellent artist. He got his ear pierced (with a needle and ring) just before he started the second grade. He loves to wear (fake) tattoos. Ian is taking guitar lessons and he also loves to bowl. I find that I'm a much better bowling spectator than bowler... Ian is really good though. :) ...So I've been tattooing since February of '92. The first four years were trial and error with a lot of common sense. In '96 I finally got a job in a studio. Since then I've learned something from every artist that I've worked with. I firmly believe that you never stop learning there is always something new to learn. I must say that my route to tattooing was not the best way to learn... nor was it the easiest. At times, it was downright hell and I feel that I missed out on a lot because of that. I could have learned much more much faster had I taken a proper apprenticeship. It seemed like no artists in my area were willing to put much faith in a female tattoo artist at the time... I came to Long Island from the outskirts of Pittsburgh Pa (a little place called McKeesport) in November of 1997 and since then I have worked very hard and developed my skills dramatically on and off skin.. I worked in Bayshore NY for 2 1/2 years before moving to Ink Alternative in Ronkonkoma in May of 2000. It's my home away from home... I practically live there. :P I enjoy working with ink and flesh,
but I also enjoy working with colored pencil My favorite subjects to work with are Fantasy and Nature, Faeries, Flowers, Dragons, Animals and Birds although I do like a wide range of things and am open to almost anything. I am always up for a challenge. Tattooing can be stressfull at times, but most of the time it's rather fun and relaxing for me. In my spare time, I still draw on paper quite a bit. Currently, I'm in in the process of setting up a few flash sets. I'm always coming up with new ideas and I love to collect images for ideas and inspiration on the internet. I hit a rather large dry spell with my art for a while there (a little over three years)... but since discovering my inspiration, my Muse, I've come back to drawing full force- or as much as I can, anyway. I owe him a debt of gratitude for reawakening that inner, more creative me. :) I am influenced by Artists and Tattoo Artists alike. Among my favorite tattoo artists are Tom Renshaw, Anil Gupta and Guy Atchison. I am heavily influenced by the Artwork of traditional artists such as Boris Vallejo & Julie Bell, Alphonse Mucha and Brian Froud. Links to their artwork and much, much more can be found in the Link Center. Music helps me to create and I like to listen to many different types depending on what I'm working on. Of course, I'm not held in by borders... so I listen to a fairly wide range of music. What I listen to depends on what I'm doing at the time. I love everything from new age music to classic rock, country, blues, jazz... industrial, techno and even some metal... I'm fairly open. :D Our family loves animals. We share our home with a big fuzzy black cat named Queen Mab (a faery in disguise as a housecat), who thinks she runs the house (what cat doesn't?), a Rottweiler/Newfoundland named Kromm, a rabbit named Ginger, two rats named Dotte & Dashe (I love rodents, especially rats), two black gerbils (Knutt & Ploo) and about 20 or so tarantulas of various sizes and colors. Never thought I'd see the day... This website was originally created purely as an experiment. A client of mine was supposed to build a website for me in exchange for work but the deal fell through. So, I decided to take up this project on my own, just to see if I could. I started out with a free page from angelfire.com that lasted from March 21, 2002 to December 31, 2003. I had to learn basic html and build the site manually. It was fairly confusing, but it worked. In November 2003 I finally got my own domain here at SharpTattoos.com. I used Dreamweaver to build this website, which is sort of cheating, but hey... I'm not a webwizard... I'm an artist.
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All images contained within this website
are ©Stacey Sharp & Sharptattoos 2002-2006
Photos, artwork and icons are not to be used without permission.