Interview with Christian Maheux

Oakville, Ontario, just outside of Toronto.

Both my parents are artists. Art’s about all I could do in high school, all I did well at. God, by grade 11, I was working here as the shop bitch, scrubbing floors, cleaning toilets, and hanging out with the other tattoo artists and learning to draw from them. That’s kind of how I got into it.

This shop’s been here since 1993. It was originally opened by Crazy Ace Daniels as a Way Cool Tattoo, which was an old Toronto chain of tattoo shops.

This was Way Cool Tattoos for a couple of years, and then Pauline bought out the franchise agreement and turned it into Yonge St. Tattoos.

We used to be downstairs, but eventually moved up and made it a little nicer, quieter, comfier.

I actually had a few. There was Pauline, Thor, Mike LeDrew. Shane Faulkner was working here at the time. Scott McEwan helped me out here and there. He wasn’t actually a mentor, but he was dating one of the piercers here, so he would come through and bug me while I was tattooing oranges.

The guy who really got me into it, though, was Dabs, Ron, who passed away a while ago. He was the first person to say to me, “Hey man, why don’t you learn how to tattoo?”

At first I kind of looked down on it. I truly believe versatility is key. It’s something I teach my apprentices. You should be good to go.

But I eventually got over that attitude because now it’s so competitive. You gotta get noticed and you gotta get busy somehow. So if you hit a niche and it gets you the work and experience you need, I’m all for it.

I just hope those artists keep themselves versatile so if the trend dies off, they’re not screwed. In slower times, if your niche isn’t bringing in enough people, what are you gonna do?

It’s a job after all. You gotta work the job.

That’s tricky. That’s an ongoing thing.

In my 28 years of tattooing, I’ve explored different styles. I’ve always kind of leaned on traditional for the basics, and I’m a self-taught artist. I went from high school to tattooing and had a lot to learn about drawing, so traditional was a good base for me.

I have a hard time pumping out the same shit over and over and over again. Sometimes I want to do traditional, sometimes something more folk art or abstract. I was doing geometry and pointillism for a bit, just exploring what I was interested in at the time.

I’ve never done the same thing for super long, so it’s almost always evolving.

It’s mostly black and gray. I work with a limited palette: black, red, green, and yellow.

I’m partially colour blind, so I avoid pastels. Most people who know me tease me for it. I don’t see lavender so good anymore.

I kind of let it dictate.

My process usually starts with a consultation. I want to know what people are looking for and what they’re after. I’ll get them to show me references or other tattoos that inspired the idea, and then I just regurgitate it out of my head and make a mess until I’ve got something I’m happy to show them.

It’s about getting a feel for what they want. They’re the carrier, I guess, of the art, so I want them to feel good about it.

Sometimes somebody says something and I’m off to the races. Sometimes I gotta sit on it until inspiration strikes.

Other artists inspire me too. Coworkers especially. I like the artistic influence and interaction between artists. Sometimes you see somebody doing something and respect the way they do it, and even if you don’t mean to, subconsciously it affects your work.

This job is in part being a graphic designer. You have to work with somebody else’s variables to make a thing, and if you’re lucky and good at what you do, they want you to do it your way.

I’m one of those people that has to make a mess and fuss something out of it.

Livelihood. Art.

I’ve been doing it for 28 years now, which is fucking crazy. It’s a way of living. It’s kind of who I gravitate towards. It’s what I see first on people, and it’s what I’m always thinking about and working on.

It was a wave that I got to be a part of, and it’s been an incredible journey.

Tattooing helps tell your story. In my experience, it also helps people get over insecurities. I know people who were never nudes but got tattooed, and now you can’t keep a shirt on them. Some people just feel more like themselves getting more tattooed, and I appreciate that.

It’s a neat little ritual that you can experience for yourself on some small scale. It makes you feel like you’ve earned something that stays with you.

Hopefully it’s not a bad experience because your artist was a dickhead.

I’m also looking into tattooing more from the folk and ritualistic side. I’m currently applying for some grants here in Canada because I’d like to explore more local Southern Ontario and Great Lakes First Nations practices and tattooing, which is next to lost because of colonialism.

No, because there’s a lot of people right now getting into ancient practices specific to their place in the world, their culture, their tribe.

The Philippines and the Polynesian islands have done such a great job of holding on to their culture and their way of tattooing that it’s inspired some of the other First Nations of the world that had their culture beat out of them by colonialism.

It’s not even just First Nations. There’s a lot of people getting into the folk-art side of things depending on their culture predating modern civilization.

It’s neat to see that artwork and those patterns coming up. Instead of playing identity politics, people are saying, “This used to be the thing that means something from where I’m from, and I might as well be proud of that, explore that, and maybe commit it to my skin.”

That’s cool as fuck to me.

Better now.

When I first started, it was a bigger-dick contest. Very, very cliquey. You kind of stuck to your own tattoo shop.

Over the years it’s gotten better, especially with the younger generations. They all know each other, they’re interacting with each other, and they’re very supportive of each other. That’s really interesting to see.

My generation’s learning that that’s just a better way to go. You don’t have to be a dick. You can actually get to know some people and make some friends.

If you own a shop or run a shop, you’ve at least got a network of people that know you’re looking and might have good things to say about you to somebody who is looking. Then you get to keep your business open.

There’s always going to be trends. We all want to make money, and if something new and exciting comes along, it’s like the music industry. There’s a sound, there’s a resonance, there’s a vibe that will inspire us.

Sometimes it’s as shallow as what the fucking pop singers are getting tattooed, and then people wanna get those things done. It is a job.

My father was an art professor, and when I asked him to teach me how to paint in oils, he had to beat the tattoo out of me. Everything I did was so tattoo-like.

It made me realize that anything I produce is gonna put food on my table, pay my rent, or allow me to travel. So there’s always this pressure for it to be a winning, sellable tattoo instead of just playing around with art.

Sometimes the job takes over and you forget that it’s an art.

You’ve gotta give yourself some time to just do you. Have some fun, make a mess, and don’t treat it like it has to make you money. You’ll be happier and you’ll grow.

I don’t think so. If you let yourself do it your way, your way is gonna show. As hard as I try to do traditional, it still looks like I did traditional.

As long as people aren’t dead set on directly stealing somebody else’s creative content, you’re gonna explore, you’re gonna evolve, you’re gonna be inspired, and there are still ways to be original.

AI is interesting. I’ve seen artists use it as a tool to get started on shit, just to get the juices flowing and see something in a way they maybe wouldn’t have seen it before.

I’ve also seen people who wanna light you on fire because you brought up AI.

I have yet to see something done by AI that has the same soul as something done by a person. I haven’t seen a piece of AI art that moves me the same way something made by a person does.

I think I can still tell the difference. But who knows? That shit’s evolving faster than we are.

Love and hate it. Love and hate it.

I love that it’s an opportunity to fucking really get yourself out there. If you use it right, it’s great. If you can handle the ups and downs of it, which currently I can’t, it’s a great tool.

We used to have to wait around for Skin & Ink mag to come out to see what other people in the world were doing. Now it’s all at your fingertips.

You can see so much cool, inspiring shit. If anything, it’s been inspirational, and it’s helped get some people who are doing incredible things well-deserved attention. It’s helping people pay their bills.

It can make or break you, and it’s what you make of it. Kind of like the job.

It’s just the algorithm and the fucking editing. That can eat a dick.

Maybe just the work involved.

People don’t understand that sometimes the drawing we gotta do for you took us three, four, sometimes eight, 12 hours, two days. We had to put it down, pick it up, come back to it, start all over.

They don’t see the work that goes into it. So when they scoff at us for pricing, sometimes it’s like, you don’t understand. I know it’s just an hour-long tattoo to you, but it was eight hours for me.

We have the power to police ourselves. We’ve done a pretty good job of getting the shitty people out of the industry who are doing creepy shit to people, and I think we need to focus on that.

If you hear people doing crappy things to people, if you know what’s going on, you should say something.

People get into this industry for the wrong reasons, and if you’re being a fucking creep, you should get gone.

I’ve seen too many people, more so back in the day, let shit pass. But now we’re getting better about it, which is reassuring to me.

It’s easier now to call somebody out, or there’s less of a degree of separation for people to be able to say, “Hey, this person was really shitty to me.”

I’m not a fan of call-out culture, but some shit deserves it.

There’s so many of us now. You gotta shine harder in order to get noticed.

I’ve mainly been focusing on the few people I’ve apprenticed over the years. Treating it in the First Nations way, passing on this knowledge and information in hopes that it will help them experience this journey that I’ve had in a way that works for them.

It means they can live it like I did.

I think that’s kind of legacy to me, or the best I can hope for until I get back on Instagram and get a million followers.

Versatility. Do an apprenticeship.

Get in with a good shop of people and be willing to learn.

It’s like anything. If you surrender to the fact that you’re starting out, it will carry you along with it. And the people around you, if they appreciate you, they’ll teach you how to get there.

Live it, love it. But be open-minded to it.

Things are changing and you gotta change with it. If you don’t, you’re just gonna end up stuck in the shit.