Bleeding Red Ink

Ink & Water Tattoo was one of the biggest names in the business, but earlier this year it all fell apart. The inside story of how a small business dream turned into a nightmare

- MORGAN SEVAREID-BOCKNEK

The directory of the building on Campbell Avenue still lists tattoo shop Ink & Water.

Patrick Liang was in the middle of inking a snake and rose forearm tattoo on a client earlier this year when he got the news. During a break, he checked his phone and saw a text message sent to an all-staff group chat from one of his bosses. Ink & Water, the popular tattoo shop on Campbell Avenue in the city’s west end, would be closing immediately and artists had to clear out their things by the end of the next day.

“It was a really confusing situation,” he said.

Staff replied to the May 14 text in a flurry, asking why the shop needed to close, and if it had to be so soon, could they not wait a couple of weeks to reschedule their clients? But no answers came, Liang said.

Ink & Water Tattoo was one of the biggest names in the business in Toronto. The shop employed some of Toronto’s most popular tattoo artists, who boast hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers. The shop hosted artists from around the world for guest stints at their locations and had a highly sought-after mentorship program for apprentices.

At a January 2024 staff meeting, it certainly didn’t seem like the shop would soon close. A new artist had just been hired, and as Liang and other artists knew, the store should have been relatively easy to keep afloat. There was little overhead, aside from rent, and the commission-based artists were contractors who brought their own equipment, artists said. The model seemed to be working.

But, artist Kelly Iisye said, “We weren’t aware of the debt.”

That debt allegedly amounted to more than $1 million, but that wasn’t all. There was the alleged misappropriation of at least $1.6 million by one of the three co-directors of the corporation as well.