Christina Christie

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Please check out www.illustratedvancouver.ca An online project to document 1,000 works of art depicting Vancouver, British Columbia ~ past, present, and future. Curated by jmv on Twitter & flickr.

Christina Christie is an accomplished freelance visual artist and tattoo artist living and working out of the lower mainland. When she’s not adorning her clients with one-of-a-kind designs, she’s showing her collections at local art shows, giving the metaphorical finger to the upturned noses of stuffy fine art collectors.

Since she was a young girl, Christina has loved to draw. And though her tools have changed, from pencils to brushes to motorized tattoo machines running at 7,000 RPMs, her passion for art has remained constant.

Christina’s introduction to tattooing professionally stemmed from an unlikely mentor: the heavily inked janitor from her highschool. He’d seen her pieces around school and suggested she work for a local shop drawing for the tattooists. Here she learned how to tattoo, her first piece being a skull with bunny ears.

While completing her apprenticeship, Christina attended Emily Carr University of Art + Design where she studied tirelessly, working towards her BA of Fine Arts. Unfortunately, many of Christina’s instructors did not share her passion for tattooing and the art that accompanies it, and they often looked down on her playful, witty approach to art.

Nevertheless, Christina pushed forth, delving full-force into the world of lowbrow art, encouraged by local lowbrow artists and mentors Nicole Steen and I, Braineater. “Lowbrow is art for the masses,” says Christina. “It’s art that doesn’t have to have any conceptual meaning, and it’s not the kind of art you really have to think about. It still carries the same kind of weight as anything else in a gallery but it’s more about fun.”

Since her graduation from art school in 2009, Christina’s work has been featured in multiple shows around the lower mainland, including the recent Strip Show, a salon-style art show featuring pinups and other interpretations of the word “stripped.” In addition, Christina’s first solo show, Tease, featuring a series of burlesque-style pinup paintings, marked the grand opening of the new JEM Cordova.

Written by Amy Wood.