Archive Note
Sharpe trained as a painter and ceramics major at an art school in Illinois before turning to tattooing, entering the trade through piercing work and discovering portrait tattooing in shop magazines before securing an apprenticeship. She built her early career at Studio 13 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where she was working when she won the second season of the Oxygen Network competition Best Ink, taking the grand prize. She later relocated to Virginia and in October 2015 founded Unkindness Art at 2923 North Avenue in Richmond, where she is owner and resident artist, and in February 2025 she and her crew opened the adjacent Nevermore, a gothic boutique and micro-gallery. Her work is large-scale, illustrative, and gothically inclined, leaning on realism and portraiture, and she names Jeff Ensminger, Jeff Gogue, and Russ Abbott among her influences.
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