ABOUT
Since the first time Christine picked up a pencil, drawing has been an enduring love in her life. As early as 4 years of age, the first images she would attempt to render were graphic comic book characters out of the newspaper’s weekend funny section. Around the same time, she became exposed to portrait style drawing through her older cousin, ten years her senior, who was heavily involved in the fine arts. Fueled by this influence, she would practice for hours trying to recreate various faces of family members or celebrities.
Over time, Christine would become introduced and involved in different forms of art, discovering her love for life drawing with conte, acrylic painting and always retaining her love for what she considers art in its most pure and basic form: when pencil meets paper. In her early teenage years, Christine became infatuated with New York City street culture, and discovered the wild style, bold lines and color combos of the urban graffiti scene. This new influence would prove to be an integral part of her life as much as drawing for years to come. Before happening upon graffiti culture, a majority of Christine’s work subsequently was captured with graphite, producing works in black and grey. This influence is reflected in her preference for tattooing in black and grey styles and was solidified with her exposure to the beautiful fine-line black and grey images characteristic of the lowrider Chicano styles of tattooing founded in Los Angeles.
Christine has always been enamored with tattoos since the moment she saw her first one. The first tattoo she ever did was on herself at the age of 14 in what she calls “jail house style” using “two pins and some india ink.” Since that very moment, she became obsessed and started collecting tattoos around the downtown Toronto area. At the age of 18 she recalls drawing full old school style sleeves on herself with pen while she was under stimulated in her high school classes. Soon Christine found herself drawing pieces on her friends in the cafeteria on lunch breaks in exchange for meal money.
Today, Christine prefers to work on a more permanent scale on the skin, applying her background in drawing with the knowledge she has acquired from working in four downtown Toronto tattoo shops in various positions, gaining foundational understanding of how the business sides of tattooing can be conducted. The first Toronto based artist to influence Christine was Greg Kidd, who insisted that she would not enjoy being a tattoo artist and that she should stick to becoming “a lawyer or something.” Determined to prove Greg wrong, she began to persuade him to show her the fundamental basics of sterilization and needle making.
Eventually, a meeting with one of the hardest working heavy hitting tattoo artists, Chino, sealed her fate as the experience of being tattooed by Chino, transpired into a pinnacle time in her pursuit. Aside from becoming friends, Christine maintains that Chino has been a great influence in the progress of her developing her skills and design capabilities in a more disciplined and focused manner.
Christine has been tattooing for four years and prefers to tattoo in black and grey, lettering, and traditional americana styles, but is also open to crossing into other genres or producing custom work. She now works along side Derek Lewis, another highly underrated and multi-talented Canadian tattoo artist who has a whopping twenty years of knowledge and experience under his belt. Derek is currently guiding Christine, fermenting her artistic capabilities to the next evolutionary plateau in her career, and she in turn is grateful to be part of the Hartless family.
In her spare time, Christine can be found in the gym training in boxing and still enjoys sketching in her black books, creating graffiti pieces, painting large scale canvases, and has been known to occasionally creep the streets late into the early hours of the morning on nights when she is battling her life long nemesis: insomnia. Christine just recently graduated from the University of Toronto, receiving her Honors BA in Sociology and Women and Gender Studies, a feat she has been relentlessly chiseling away at over the last half decade. As a gift to herself for completing her academic pursuit, she recently purchased her first bike, an ’87 Kawasaki EX500 Ninja and hopes to acquire some knowledge in airbrushing to marry together her two newest loves of motorcycles and aerosol art.
Stay tuned to witness her growth.