In Focus: Get to Know Oliver Peck | Ink Master

I feel like I've always been an overwhelmingly positive person. It was like that when I was a kid, but as an adult I've adapted it as a philosophy, whether it's jail, drugs, car accidents, father dying. The positive mental attitude has helped me overcome everything you have. To choose to feel great, you have to choose to smile, you have to choose to be positive. Me, Carri, that attitude towards almost everything. I was

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n to be a big crybaby as a child, any little Nick, scrape or cut. You just

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. I could not stand it. I wouldn't even put a worm on a hook when we fished as a kid.

I wasn't good at handling pain, but something about getting a tattoo just expressed myself and in a different way or made the pain worth it. The more I got into tattooing, the more I discovered I loved it and it slowly became all I wanted to do with my life while growing up in Fort Worth. I feel like it's a perfect place for me. We lived in a little. Suburban neighborhood I could skateboard to school it was a big enough city that you had what you needed. Fort Worth is super friendly, everyone is like a super clean city.

When Oliver was very young he liked to draw when he was supposed to be doing his homework. he drew pictures he had ADHD except when he drew when Oliver was a teenager he was a skateboarder I was the B kid on the BMX bike or the skateboard kid definitely the first thing I was passionate about in my life we ​​met at school High school was like this weird high school enrollment thing where you could walk around the cafeteria and pick the classes you wanted. He was one of the only kids who ever skated just by looking at that skateboard, that's all.

The football players didn't like him because the girls did. He was playing with these girls in class and the guy Jock would find out, you know, he would find out and, next thing you know, we'd be. Skating on a Friday night or something and these jocks drive by and throw B beer at us as we skate down the street in front of the high school. Walking into school the next day with a black eye was like a badge of honor, you know? like I'm still here you know that whole kind of punk rock attitude you can't you can't break me you know whatever and uh I think that has a lot to do with me building a character and staying true to who I was when Oliver started tattooing I just thought it would be something temporary.

I didn't think it would last this long. Well, I had started tattooing and I started doing some tattoos on myself and some friends. I set up a little makeshift store in a friend of mine's basement in Fort Worth for a while and I was really into partying and doing drugs and I ended up going to jail and I got out of jail and got a job. in a conveyor belt factory and I was still doing some tattoos on some friends, then someone gave me a tattoo magazine and it blew me away, like I had no idea what things could be done with tattoos and I thought man, there's people who do this for a job and I thought that's what I had to do and then a guy named Richard stelle moved to Dallas opened Paradise Tattoo and I just met him and started hanging out at Paradise literally at seven. days a week, when he first came to shop, he was, you know, he was very young, so he was already tattooing, you know, and he was, and I liked it because he did it the same way that I did it for so long. time, you know?

I could see someone that all they need is a push in the right direction and I started absorbing it trying to learn everything I could and one day Richard said, bluntly, that you want to learn how to tattoo and I was like yeah, he was hanging out and hanging out and hanging out and some you know, if you're going to be hanging out here all the time, you might as well come to work here, come to work here, forget everything you know, start from scratch. I'll teach you how to tattoo and that's what happened and this together every day or whatever bike he rides, he'll buy, he'll ride a bike, one that matches, it's the same year, like we do the same thing. year or sometimes we'll do our year of birth, so I'll ride my 65, he'll ride a 71, sometimes he'll.

If he rides his Chopper, then I ride my only bike which is a kind of chopper and we will start the discussion. at the door and in the end we will end up going where Oliver wants, except Anton, today we are not going to have lunch at Anton's house. I mean, I definitely like having a favorite motorcycle, it's like having a favorite Beetle song, like every other month. It could change, you know, depending on what's going on. I have something about the human Spirit that connects you to the universe in a way that you relate to it on your own terms, so the motorcycle I have was a 1971 motorcycle, the same year as me. something was born about riding that motorcycle, we've been on this planet together for 44 years and you're driving down the road and it's this old rickety motorcycle that you know could explode at any second, it's just the best feeling on Earth, well , this is Deep.

Ellum this is my neighborhood I've been here in one form or another for almost 30 years I guess well this is Three Links this is our local hangout this is our main bar this is where our and all of our friends enjoy the most. the Twilight Lounge, this is where my friend Josh Hammer and I host karaoke every Thursday night, the best karaoke in the world, as stated in numerous posts. He's very rigorous about if you have a place in the community and and you can uh and you have a gift, so use that gift and it will pay off, he takes care of the people that are in his community, that works for him, when I came back into town, I looked for Oliver and finally got him after hanging up. comes out two or three times, says, man, you gotta come work on Elm Street, so yeah, I'll show up, I'll work there, Oliver's really loyal person, he never forgets a friend, he never forgets a client, you got a question, you have a problem, stop what's going on, which is like a billion things at once, everything, here we are at the anchor.

Screen printing, uh, t-shirt printing shop that started in 1999, it's all small batch handmade, it's all just old school. way of squeezing the ink by hand and it's definitely something that you have to love doing, it's not something that this wouldn't continue in business if it wasn't something that I loved in the typical anchor screen printing fashion that we're printing t-shirts for. the event the day before the event that way they are hot from the press, so this is the very simple design for the Elm Street Music and Tattoo Fest 2016. This festival is incredibly important to Oliver, not only because he wants to have a festival . wanted to create an environment where he could bring all his friends that he loves and appreciates to some kind of big party 20 years ago, when I first went to a tattoo convention with Richard, it was a smaller, more closed deal, everyone who was there, everyone knew it.

Me and each other were like, man, we need to have a tattoo event that's more like that, so, you know, we started putting this idea together to start small and have 40 tattoo artists that way, all 40 tattoos will get hit. for everyone around him. he wants them to succeed, so he loves creating environments where everyone can thrive and this is just another one of those massive events that hopefully we can drive and make happen for everyone. The way I think about tattooing in general is you know it's my preferred artistic medium that's where I feel most comfortable practicing art there was no other medium that had that aesthetic I can't imagine not tattooing I mean I'm going on vacation and I I carry my GE tattoo with me and I get tattooed at night I mean it's definitely something that takes a toll on your body.

I guess my only plan is to tattoo as long as my hands can hold out. Hi, I'm Oliver Peek. Be sure to subscribe to Spikes on YouTube for more Inkmas videos.