Mike Davis is an American tattooer and self-taught surrealist painter, born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1961 and based in San Francisco since 1992. He is the proprietor of Everlasting Tattoo at 813 Divisadero Street and one of the clearest American examples of the painter-tattooer model, drawing openly on Northern Renaissance and Flemish painting alongside the Californian lowbrow and pop-surrealist register.

Who is Mike Davis?

Mike Davis is an American tattoo artist and painter born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1961 and based in San Francisco since 1992. He is the proprietor of Everlasting Tattoo, the custom-only studio he took over from its original owner and relocated to 813 Divisadero Street around 2000. He should not be confused with the underground comix cartoonist of the same name or with the late Marxist urban historian Mike Davis (1946 to 2022).

What is Mike Davis known for?

Davis is known for a dark, illustrative, narrative-driven tattoo style and for treating gallery painting and tattooing as a single body of work. His painted output draws heavily on Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Brueghel, and Jan van Eyck, overlaid with the contemporary pop-surrealism and lowbrow register associated with Robert Williams. He published a monograph, A Blind Man's Journey: The Art of Mike Davis (Last Gasp, 2014), and has shown internationally, including the 2013 HEY! Modern Art and Pop Culture exhibition at Halle Saint-Pierre in Paris.

Biography and significance

Davis was born in Jacksonville in 1961 and is self-taught as a painter. His route into tattooing ran through a 1988 apprenticeship under Dana Brunson, the Cincinnati tattooer whose own training descended through D.C. Paul and upstream into Huck Spaulding and Paul Rogers. That places Davis in one of the documented spines of late-twentieth-century American traditional tattooing.

In 1992 he moved to San Francisco, the same year the first iteration of Everlasting Tattoo opened on McAllister Street. Davis took over the business and, around 2000, relocated it to 813 Divisadero Street, building out the space himself. He has stated that he met Aaron Cain during this period and credits Cain as a substantive teacher in matters of tattooing and art. Everlasting has operated as a custom-only, by-appointment studio run on a chair-time co-op model ever since, and was added to the San Francisco Legacy Business Registry.

The significance of Davis's career is twofold. As a shop principal, his stewardship of Everlasting places him among the San Francisco custom-only proprietors whose appointment-based studios materially shifted American tattooing away from the older flash-street-shop model in the 1990s and early 2000s. As a painter-tattooer, he is repeatedly cited by other working tattooers as a primary influence on integrating gallery painting and tattooing into one practice, working in a Northern-Renaissance- and lowbrow-inflected idiom outside the dominant Japanese, American traditional, and black-and-grey axes.

Lineage and influence

Davis's documented apprentice master was Dana Brunson; upstream, the lineage runs through D.C. Paul to Huck Spaulding and Paul Rogers, anchoring Davis to the mid-century Carolinas tradition. Aaron Cain is named by Davis himself as a substantive teacher after his 1992 San Francisco arrival. His stylistic peers include the fellow painter-tattooers Henry Lewis (a 2013 two-person exhibition partner) and Shawn Barber, and his work is read against Don Ed Hardy as the older Bay Area model of the painter-tattooer in a custom-appointment shop. A persistent claim that Davis co-owns Memoir Tattoo in Los Angeles is not supported by sources; Memoir was founded in 2009 by Kim Saigh and Shawn Barber, and Davis's connection to that studio is collegial rather than ownership.

Cross-references

Sources

  • Everlasting Tattoo, "Mike Davis" artist page and official site (everlastingtattoo.com). Studio's own biography and proprietorship record.
  • Hoodline (October 2014), "Meet Everlasting Tattoo, A Divisadero Presence For Over 20 Years." Documents the 1992 McAllister Street founding under an original owner, the move to 813 Divisadero around 2000 under Davis, and the custom-only orientation.
  • Artjaws, "Mike Davis" portfolio page. Documents the 1961 Jacksonville birthplace, the 1988 career start, the Dana Brunson apprenticeship, the 1992 San Francisco arrival, and the Bosch / Brueghel / Van Eyck / Robert Williams influences.
  • Last Gasp, A Blind Man's Journey: The Art of Mike Davis (2014, ISBN 9780867197938). The principal published collection of his painted work.
  • Cincinnati Magazine, "Shop Talk: Dana Brunson." Documents Brunson's own apprenticeship under D.C. Paul and the upstream Huck Spaulding / Paul Rogers lineage into which Davis's 1988 apprenticeship attaches.

Editorial

Researched and written by John J. Mayo III, Editor, Tattoo History Atlas. Confidence is held at MIXED tier. The birth year and place, the Dana Brunson apprenticeship, the 1988 career start, the 1992 San Francisco arrival, the Everlasting proprietorship, the 2014 monograph, the 2013 Paris and San Francisco exhibitions, and Margaret Cho's documented patronage are verified across independent sources. The Memoir Tattoo co-ownership framing is not supported and is corrected here. Exact apprenticeship dates, the precise Everlasting takeover year, and a permanent-collection holding attributed to the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art remain single-source or unverified.

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