Charlottetown tattooist John Dohe has had a hand in a whole new body of art lately.
With 14 years of tattooing to his credit, this body artist has focused his attention on an entirely different canvas — not the living, breathing and sometimes squirmy kind, but the more typical stationary hang-on-the-wall type.
And now more than 15 of his works are on display at Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown — John Dohe: String — as part of the Confederation Centre Art Gallery’s Emerging Artist Series supported by the RBC Foundation.
“It’s a weird thing about tattooing in looking back at what it’s done for me, it’s got me across Canada. I’ve met a lot of artists. I’ve been able to get into painting. It’s actually given me a lot,” Dohe says of his colourful career path.
The art in Dohe’s life started when he was a cartoon-crazy kid growing up in Cambridge in the Murray River area.
He gravitated to animation like Bugs Bunny to carrots, but with only two television channels to choose from and rabbit-ear reception, it was slim pickings.
“I watched like My Little Pony and Care Bears and stuff. If it was on I didn’t care (what it was). It was a visual language. To me, a cartoon was a cartoon. If you didn’t have much to look at, you weren’t too fussy,” he says.
When Dohe was 10 years old, he embarked on a real life comic-inspired odyssey when he began learning about comic book inking and drawing techniques from Charlottetown cartoonist Pete Murphy.
It was his first introduction to another like-minded soul who understood his way of thinking.
“When I found somebody who was doing cartooning, I was like, ‘OK I could probably talk to this guy. He’ll understand this language and we can talk,’” Dohe remembers.
“As far as that analogy goes, it’s kind of like being the only person on P.E.I. who speaks Dutch. If you speak Dutch and you only know a bit of English it’s probably going to be pretty hard to have the opportunity to go around and say as much as you’d like to because you’re limited . . . .
“And the visual language is a real primary language and Pete Murphy was the guy who was willing to sit down and take it seriously and talk to me about it in the way that we knew.”
Dohe’s dream was to do comic books, but by the age of 17 he still hadn’t broken into this very difficult market.
“I got a lot of rejection letters,” he admits, laughing.
To get some cash flow going, Dohe, decided to get into tattooing, where his natural drawing ability came in very handy.
“The weird thing was I wanted tattoos, I didn’t want to do them because it was all tracing. But people would come in wanting a tattoo and the (shop owner) would say ‘We don’t have a picture of that.’ And I’d say, ‘I can just draw it for you now,’” he remembers.
“And the next thing you know I started thinking about tattoos (all the time) and thought ‘You know, this is a great opportunity to draw.’”
I ask myself, why waste your time fretting over a person who is tattooed and/or pierced? Does this tattooed/pierced individual really have a hold on your life that is truly negative? If the answer happens to equate to "no", then why stress your mind? We are all human with different aspects, traits, goals, morals etc. Look at an individual, as a individual.What we have in common though (tattooed or not), we all have familys, friends, and eat, sleep, poop. We should as a society, try our absolute best to NOT bully. Everyone has their right to their oppinions, with discretion. I too am heavly tattooed. I enjoy the right to express myself in the way i know best. I work hard everyday for my little family. From those who would see me off glance, they would not know me as a tattooed woman, but more as a "soccer mom". This article is about an artist and his art, not about judgement. Let us respect our neighbors for their generous contributions to life.