Face to face with Eliseo
The artisan of skin painting
Eliseo Franchini, talks about his journey combining passions, art and craftsmanship. It’s a ritual that blends aesthetics and experience, ‘imprinted’ and expressed in the beauty of an indelible and perfect line.
THE ROOTS OF A CRAFT: CURIOSITY, TECHNIQUE AND SKIN Where does your art and passion for tattooing come from? I’ve been passionate about drawing since I was a child. I went to art school in Trento and worked as an illustrator for an advertising agency. My interest in tattoos was kind of born out of curiosity. I started illustrating images for some tattoo magazines and that’s when I got really into it. This was back in the late 1990s or early 2000s. At first I took it as a bit of an experiment, a new material to work with, the skin. At the time, I wasn’t really into tattoos. I was just curious to try this new type of “material”.
What does art mean to you and what does it mean to be a tattoo artist? When I think about tattooing, I see it as more of a craft than art. Tattooing for me is a form of craftsmanship. You go and imprint on the skin what the client is trying to explain and convey to you. Art for me is in the free drawing, in the pictures I make, where I let myself be carried away. I like to engage with the person, listen to their story, understand where the idea comes from and why. It is something emotional, a kind of collaboration.
Where do you find the inspiration for your art? From the connection I have with the mountains. I also find this aspect in the world of tattooing.
There is a growing tendency to have elements of nature tattooed, because perhaps there is nothing else as beautiful and perfect. What do you think about this? Today we have so many impulses. I think about how many images are scrolling through tablets and mobile phones, images that are very similar to each other, which then form a trend, a trend that is created by marketing. I think this nature-inspired style is more of a general influence.
FROM UNDERGROUND RITUAL TO MAINSTREAM PHENOMENON Have you ever refused to draw a tattoo? Yes, the refusal was on a technical level. I refused to draw an image that would not come out well. I don’t refuse because of the subject, but because of the dimensions.
How many profiles of the Brenta Dolomites have you tattooed? More or less 50.
There was a time when tattoos were scary and indicative of an underground, protesting lifestyle, they were taboo or represented a generational challenge. You grew up in the middle of that era, how did you interpret it? Is it a sociological phenomenon in your opinion? To be honest, I feel a bit out of place and to this day I don’t really fit into this tattoo world. I’m still exploring my own way of thinking, but it’s challenging. The fact that tattoos are now so widely accepted has made them a very commercial phenomenon. I have to say, I’m a bit nostalgic. In the early years of my career, I had experience in different studios where the people who came in were the eclectic, the fringe, who were looking for experience, not aesthetics. It was a different approach. Today it is less human. Back then, tattooing was a kind of preservation of a borderline profession. These days, this attitude is no longer there. It’s become a sociological phenomenon that has somewhat distorted the origin of tattooing
Eliseo has drawn over 10.000 tattoos to dateHow was HIRSCH born? It was a somewhat hidden passion that I later shared with my sister Eva: the idea of a brand that represented the vision I had in my head. At first it was just tattooing, then with Eva we started to expand the project and print tattoos on T-shirts. Sometimes my creations are specially designed for our clothing line, for which I design and create freely. Hirsch means ‘deer’ [in German]: the logo I created, however, is a combination of elements, it was born on impulse, there is a link with the runes, there is a bit of my whole world. The deer has always fascinated me: it’s a majestic forest animal, it’s there, but you rarely see it, it’s elegant and silent.
A drawing for a lifetime. Tell us about it… These days, it’s more like a painting than a tattoo for me. A painting is a permanent thing. It travels with you and is preserved in time. It remains even after death. A tattoo is something you take with you forever. Sometimes, though, it can be covered up because it reminds you of a moment in your life you’d rather forget. Then it dies with you. Of everything I have created - in 18 years I have drawn more than 10,000 tattoos - nothing will remain. The most that survives is a drawing on canvas, a publication. It is no coincidence that I am full of big books with all the drawings and sketches of the tattoos.
