SL - “I started my tattooing career when I was seventeen years of age just before I fell pregnant with my first daughter. I didn’t have what you would call an education after leaving school at fourteen and going to art college for a few months at sixteen . I was what you might call a true recluse, spending hours drawing and finding comfort in my art in my teenage years. At eighteen I did manage to secure an apprenticeship in a local studio, but I really didn’t know anything about the industry and I was living in a hostel with my daughter who was just one at the time, all I knew was that I needed to be a tattoo artist!”
PGM - It sounds like a very positive start, and then what happened?
SL - “ Unfortunately I was sacked within the month but I didn’t let that stop me. I juggled raising a child with learning the craft. Over the years I’d worked in six different studios on and off and tried my hardest to learn everything I could, picking things up along the way. I was always really grateful for any studio who gave me a job, but I was never lucky enough to have a mentor. I was a Mum of two young children by now, but I realised something, out of those six tattoo studios that I had been at, there were only two where the owner had been tattooing longer than me and it occurred to me- I had been tattooing eight years and it was about time I got my own place.
PGM – So here you are, a young family, you have decided to go into business for yourself, how did you start?
SL – The name, it took me ages to come up with Human Canvas, but I remember it well. My sister Lisa and I were sat in a pub in Lichfield and trying to think of how to portray art on skin as a business name and I said “it’s like you’re a human, but a canvas”......bingo. That was it, joint effort between us. Nothing ever stays the same though and I was attending a small business course when my father, Andy, passed away all of a sudden from a brain haemorrhage. He was only forty-six and I was devastated. My father had always supported me as best he could and I did my first ever tattoo on him all those years ago, he was covered in my art and was basically a human practice pad.
PGM – that must have been so hard to keep going, forty-six is very young, where did you go from there?
SL - I had been looking all over for a suitable spot to start the tattoo and piercing business, and lived near Walsall all my life. Then I noticed a beautiful shopping arcade and it seemed perfect for me, back then a lot of tattoo shops were still owned and controlled by bikers, so the thought of being inside a shopping centre was the security I felt I needed seeing as I was doing it all on my own. I had left my husband just before I started in business and found myself homeless living out of a backpack for the first year or so. I was dotting about between hotels and households and had to leave my two children living with their father for a short time as I needed to ensure that the business got off its feet, I did it for them, so they could have security in their future
PGM – it sounds like you had to make a lot of sacrifices, surely it got easier from there?
SL – Yes I guess I did, I had plied everything I had into starting up and I could not afford for it not to work, it just was not an option. I was twenty-five and pretty clueless but failure was not even considered for a minute. The first few years of business I worked all day and night, raising the two girls I already had single handed and I had my third child in 2012 and ended up in hospital for three days as I was exhausted, I was told to take it easy but no chance, there was work to do. After five years of trading, I finally outgrew my first shop, a pokey little place but quaint all the same and needed to move into a bigger premise and then the unit opposite my studio had recently become available. It seemed like a sign as the timing was right and I went for it.
PGM – So you still saw the positives even after all the walls that have been put up in front of you, that is pretty inspirational
SL – Thank you, the problems didn’t end there though, unfortunately the paperwork had taken so long that by the time I actually moved across I had lost half of my work force but I didn’t let that phase me.
PGM – So with all the hurdles you faced, I am sure people telling you that you couldn’t do it, not to mention the sacrifices you talked about, I have to ask, why?
SL – Well, now my business is a decade old and I couldn’t be happier, through blood sweat and tears and the heart ache of not seeing my little girls half as often as I would like, it was all worth it. I want my girls to have a Mum who they can look up to and teach them to be strong and carry on, even if the whole world seems against you. I can offer young people a place to grow and learn the trade, something I never seemed to be able to secure for myself. And I now own and run a mental health awareness live music event which means a lot to me on a personal level. I love the permanence of tattooing, seeing as with the passing of time everything changes, we age, things wear down, deteriorate, need replacing, people come and go...... But tattoos, they stay with me forever. And my art stays with the people I’ve tattooed over the years and I couldn’t feel more honoured every time someone trusts me with their body. Their ‘Human Canvas’.
You can contact Saz at www.humancanvastattoo.co.uk