Angelique Houtkamp

The first time I ventured downtown with a certain someone who is currently instilling my life with all kinds of awesome, we ended up somewhere between Bloor and Bathurst and Bloor and Spadina. I am terrible with directions. Please do not ask me exactly where I was, but I did end up getting stuck in Honest Ed's, and spent a few brief minutes wondering if I was to be trapped between a display of Virgin Mary clocks and 99 cent peanuts for the rest of my life.

In addition to discovering that yes, there ARE other shops near Bloor and Yonge that don't involve creepy old men selling sex toys and PVC bondage gear, I also managed to come across a Dutch artist's book in a graphic novel store that indulged my love of pin-up girls and body modification. Her name is Angelique Hautkamp, and my god, I would kill just to have her design a tattoo for me.


According to her website, she learned to tattoo at the same time she learned how to paint, inspired by a friend's gallery show. The influence of traditional style tattoos on her work is very obvious, but this only adds to their charm. I've always been a fan of beautiful but strange doe-eyed girls as subjects in art, and Angelique's flapper skeletons and animal-human hybrids are enormously appealing. Plus, as the people who know me are aware, every single aspect of tattoo and piercing culture never ceases to fascinate me. Angelique's art represents both past and future for the body modification world, a throwback to the history of tattoo art and a message to modern naysayers that tattoos can certainly be fine art too.