Meet Nathalie Antonello

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nathalie Antonello.

Nathalie, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
This story started a while ago, pretty randomly. I wasn’t expecting that I was becoming a tattooer as a ‘real’ job. It was a sort of a surprise because I started just for fun, in a tattoo studio, guided by another tattoo artist. When I started, I was into an emotional storm because of some personal stuff and tattooing was giving me some extra-stress. I wasn’t balanced at all and my lines were very awful. Then, something has changed (and still changes) in my perception of things. Seven years later, I work in a couple of Italian tattoo studios and I feel like this kind of job gave me the ‘zen’ I was probably looking for.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It wasn’t smooth at all, because in those years, bad mood – bad work, and I wasn’t able to control it at all. Then, consequently, bad work meant extra-bad mood and so on, like a circle. I had to break out tons of times before starting a real path to real consciousness and to understand that lines which reflect moods aren’t necessarily something wrong, but something which made me understand that tattooing is strictly connected with my inner balance (and drawing too). Now if I had a bad day, I can tattoo as every other day but I still know that if I put myself in a relaxed and ‘grounded’ mood, ideas are even better and working becomes kinda magical.

We’d love to hear more about your art.
My works take inspiration mainly from ancient engravings, Reinassance and Medieval art, vintage botanical illustrations and from some esoteric topics. The style of tattoo is a fusion between blackwork, minimal linework and dotwork, mainly in black and white or black and grey.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If I had to start over, I’d never start this path again because tattooing in these years had become really difficult (to emerge as an artist in your neighborhood, first of all, then to find a strong bond between you and your customers), due to a lot of people who are trying to tattoo (some are great, some are doing it ‘just for fun’ haha). If I had to start over, I would probably focus myself mostly on paper art and illustrations.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/madrededios_/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/madrededios666

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