Conrad originally came to me for a cover-up on his back, but the project gradually expanded from a single dragon into a full backpiece. Two dragons now chase one another in a continuous movement that begins at the front of the neck, travels over one shoulder and down the length of the back, before rising again across the opposite side and shoulder. The composition was built around the movement of Conrad’s body, so the dragons are never seen from only one fixed viewpoint.

The older tattoos beneath the piece belonged to an earlier part of Conrad’s life that he no longer felt connected to; some had been there so long that he no longer remembered when he had acquired them. Rather than simply hiding them, the new work absorbs them into a much larger narrative. The two circling dragons suggest continuity, balance and opposing forces held in motion — a cycle without a clear beginning or end. Started when Conrad was in his late sixties, the tattoo became less about erasing the past than transforming it into something deliberate, vivid and newly his own.