Asia's Ink Personifies Anxiety

It's so easy to be spoiled by reporting on spectacular tattoos, that one often loses sight of the fact that even rudimentary designs can also be really interesting.

Take Asia, for example, who I ran into at my local laundromat. He has a simple black line drawing tattooed on his inner left forearm. It looked really interesting, so I asked him if he'd be kind enough to share, which he did:

I asked Asia to explain:

"It's just some original artwork I did maybe about 16, 17 years ago. And I decided a couple years later to get it done as [a tattoo] ... it's kinda like a reference of a hard time and what anxiety or a panic attack would look like ... if  you had to visualize an anxiety attack or panic attack ... some of the things that I use in this tattoo ... the compressions of one arm wrapped around itself, kinda like an octopus ... some tension here with the lines on the [side of the] body ... tension here ... where the mouth would be ... so being unable to speak ... same thing with the blacked out eyes .... tension with the thoughts, which is the nails going in and of course, you know, head on fire ...I call it the Dead Mermaid but it's really about anxiety."

I really like the concept and how well Asia explained the manifestation of anxiety in his original artwork.

He had this done a while back at FunCity Tattoo on St. Mark's Place in Manhattan.

Thanks to Asia for sharing this cool tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

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