January 2012 Female Canvas: Ashley

Sunday, 01 January 2012 08:20 Last Updated on Sunday, 01 January 2012 08:20 Written by admin

Say hello to Ashley, another beautiful lady I have know and shot with since 2005. While it has been a bit of time since our last session together we’ll see what we can do about getting a new one this oncoming year!

Bio:

I will never forget the look on that elderly woman’s face. She glared at me with a mixture of disgust and intrigue as I stood in front of the mirror, trying on my various finds from the thrift store.

“Oh, honey,” she began in mock sympathy. “What will you do when you need to wear a wedding dress?”

Immediately I knew what she meant. She ran her fingers across her sternum, stroking the spot that I had covered with a large chest piece of blues and reds and purples.

I replied, “The person I marry will love me as I am, and my tattoos are a part of me.” She scoffed and went along with her shopping, unable to comprehend that someone could love a monster such as me.

But I know nothing else. Born in Elizabethtown, Kentucky in 1986, my family moved to San Diego when I was three years old. For as long as I can remember, my mother and her then-husband had tattoos that I admired. As a child who loved to personalize her effects with stickers, tattoos were like the next best thing.

My first tattoo came a few months after my 18th birthday. It’s artwork from the band AFI, a heart with bat wings between my shoulders. Second came the traditional rose on my right hip, an homage to a rose my mother has on her leg. Then an old-school rose on my left hip, my chest piece of a pin-cushion heart, a garter around my right thigh and finally a pin-up pirate girl on the outside of my right leg from my knee to my ankle.
It has been a few years since my last piece. I have been deeply contemplating what the next work of art shall be but I haven’t come up with anything that speaks to me. I suppose I will know when the time is right.

As for the elderly woman, I think of her words from time to time. But personally, I find that my tattoos are the best screening process for potential acquaintances, friends and lovers. I have always possessed the desire to get to know someone’s true character before judging them. It’s only right that I should want the same from those in my life. If someone does not like me simply upon sighting me, I have decided that this is not a person I want in my life anyway.

Life is too short to let others dictate your path in life. Even as my skin sags, my tattoos stretch and droop, I will be happy knowing that I lived life for myself.

Things that piss me off:

Rudeness. (A man who is polite to a cashier/server is so sexy!)
Ignorance. (Along with love, the pursuit of knowledge is the meaning of life!)
Religious zealots