Born in Pereira, between the mountains and the rivers of Colombia. Divorced parents, several siblings, and a childhood I remember as free — free above all to be myself. My father drew; my mother and my uncle lived for music. Before I could name any of it, my family had already given me the two things the work would need: technique to admire, and permission to be authentic.
1995
At eleven I found graffiti. I was winning drawing contests at school, painting murals for the neighbourhood, and getting paid for some of them. Realising I could make a living from what I already loved changed everything. With that money I funded my next idea: printing shirts to sell to my classmates.
2006
At fifteen I finished school, got my first tattoo, and bought a machine of my own. I knew almost immediately that it had been a mistake: skin is not paper — it reacts, and it belongs to someone. There were no courses back then, and the tattooers of the time guarded what they knew.
2010
I enrolled in Fine Arts at the Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira. Chiaroscuro, volume, anatomy — and an emphasis in sculpture that taught me to read form in three dimensions, not only as light and shadow on paper. I paid for the first semester; merit covered the next four and a half years.
2012
I grew close to my professors — first assisting them, then standing in when they couldn't teach. The work paid: not much, but enough to live on, and all of it from my own hands. I fell for teaching there, and never let it go. The seminars I give today started in that classroom.
2014
At twenty I met the woman who is now my wife. Eleven years later, she has been beside every project — building pieces with me back in the academy, and every step of the career that came after.
2015
With the academy behind me, I understood it was time to carry everything I had learned into tattooing — and to give it my whole focus. Ten months in a studio of my own with two friends, and then the best studio in the city came for me. There I watched professionals work: how they built a piece, what tools they used, how they thought.
2017
Buga, my first convention. I entered the category I wanted to explore and took first place — proof that building on academic foundations had been the right bet. I shot two photographs that weekend, the finished tattoo and the award, because the rest of the time I was working. Those two earned me my first sponsor, Proton Stencil, which I still carry today.
2018
More conventions across the country, each one demanding more of me than the last. I kept exhibiting and taking commissions, but the focus had narrowed. I wanted to stand out in tattooing, and I was willing to spend years doing it.
2019
The national circuit stopped being enough. I made contacts online and travelled to Germany, Spain and Sweden — visiting studios, learning how the industry worked elsewhere, walking through the museums of classical art, and working beside artists I had admired from a distance. I watched them admire my work back.
2020
By then I was being invited to judge conventions, and my position carried authority. Noble Art invited me to New York. It took me nine months to answer — I had always pictured Europe, for the life and for the art history. My wife was the one who saw it clearly: New York is where the best in the world gather.
2023
Clients who let me create freely. Seminars where I hand over the method instead of guarding it, because a craft only rises when everyone in it does. And a clothing house I am building in the United States — the same idea I had at eleven, printing shirts for my classmates. Identity can be worn in more than one way.
Clothing house2026