Living the Dream

Counterintuitively, David Gluck was a painter before taking up tattooing little more than a decade ago. While skin is a completely different substrate and ink a far cry from oil paint, the skills must be transferrable to some degree because there is a wait-time of nine months to get an appointment with him.

- DAVID GLUCK

Gluck and his wife, Kathryn Stone, also a fine artist who took up tattooing with her husband, now own their own shop on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, with views of the ocean.

"Now we kind of get to have our cake and eat it too," he says. "We get to make the best paintings we want to make and we don't have the pressure we used to in the past when we didn't have a secondary income."

Today they have two young children, live on a property with a pond, and are a stone's throw from a lake and the ocean.

"I've really got it made," he says. "I have gotten everything I want out of life. I love where I live and am making the art I want to make. At this point, I'm just running out the clock."

The bulk of Gluck's tattoos are dark skeletons, ghouls, beasts and other frightening beings. But talking to Gluck, you quickly realize his tattoo art does not at all reflect his personality. "I'm goofy and happy and loud and annoying," he laughs. He finds satisfaction in the tattoo work because he can take on subject matter that wouldn't be well-received in the fine art market.