Dan’s tattoo story started in Miami, Florida, back in 2011. He went to art school with the noble intention of becoming an art teacher, but then life threw him a curveball, handed him a tattoo machine, and said, “Nah, dude. You’re doing this.” He fell hard for tattooing and never looked back. Over the years, he’s put in the miles: studying the masters, obsessing over light, texture, anatomy, composition, and all the little things that make a piece come alive. He’s highly skilled in realism, illustrative, blackwork, and geometric work, but he’s not a one-trick pony. Horror is his jam, but if somebody brings him a portrait, a creature, a weird idea from the depths of their imagination, or something completely different, he’s down to make it happen.

Dan has a soft spot for the dark side of things. Vampires. Monsters. Creeps. The kind of stuff that looks even cooler under a flickering neon sign at 2 a.m. But horror is an inspiration, not a cage. His artistic brain pulls from everywhere: movies, nature, comic books, traditional pattern work, paintings, statues, and the artists who paved the way before him. He loves studying how the masters make something feel real, then taking that knowledge and putting his own spin on it. Whether he’s chasing the subtle details of a realistic portrait or building something bold and graphic out of blackwork and geometry, Dan knows his way around the machine.

When he’s not tattooing, Dan is usually somewhere between hanging with his family, having a solo movie-theater date, enjoying a cold brewski, or observing the sky for alien phenomena. He’s a husband, a dad, a zookeeper, a gamer, a comic-book reader, and a dude who genuinely enjoys a good horror movie and a really good pizza. He likes working out, listening to vinyl records, walking the dogs, messing around in the garden, baking sourdough, and generally keeping things pretty mellow. Somewhere along the way, the art-school dropout became a tattoo artist with a house full of animals and kids. Not a bad trade.

At the end of the day, Dan is just a laid-back dude who loves making art, loves his family, and loves putting cool stuff on people forever. He’s got a little bit of “The Dude,” a little bit of an ’80s Lost Boy, and maybe a tiny bit of sewer-dwelling mutant turtle energy. He likes horror, but he can tattoo just about anything. Bring him something weird, something beautiful, something badass—or something you can’t quite explain yet. He’ll figure it out. Cowabunga, or whatever.