About me
Hey, I’m Golan.
I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. At school my notebooks were probably filled with more drawings than solved exercises or notes – and at some point also my classmates’ arms, which I was allowed to “tattoo” with felt-tip pens.
As a 90s kid, I grew up with the aesthetics of the 90s and 2000s. Hip-hop, graffiti and urban culture shaped me early on. Even back then I was fascinated by how something so raw, cheeky and eye-catching could be combined with art and an extremely high level of detail.
Back then, though, I had no idea that tattooing would one day become my job.
Getting started was rather… unplanned.
I actually got into tattooing through a pretty absurd coincidence.
The father of my girlfriend at the time – and wife today – had ordered a cheap tattoo machine online and decided to tattoo his own leg – with no tattooing experience and practically no idea about drawing.
When we arrived, the result was adventurous, to say the least.
My girlfriend mentioned that I could draw well, and suddenly I was supposed to save the thing. I knew just as little about tattooing and didn’t want to at first. In the end, I picked up the machine anyway.
That evening I tattooed not only him, but somehow also the others who were there – and myself.
Those tattoos were definitely not perfect. But something else had happened: I wanted to know how to do it right.
And that’s how it all started.
Many influences became my own signature.
Since then, I’ve worked in all kinds of studios and learned from artists from many different parts of the world – each with their own way of working and their own strengths.
I never wanted to simply copy the way one single artist works. I tried to take from each of them what impressed me most about their work: technique, design, detail, composition and approach.
Over time, that turned into my own mix.
Today my focus is mainly on black & grey, strong expression, a high level of detail and tattoos with a natural flow.
Cheeky on the outside. Soft at the core.
Maybe this contrast describes me and my work best.
I love the raw, cheeky and sometimes almost “ghetto” aesthetic that already thrilled me as a teenager. At the same time I’m pretty soft at the core and probably more interested in people and their stories than in almost anything else.
Even as a kid I wasn’t very interested in technical things. From my grandfather I much preferred to hear stories: where he came from, what he had experienced and what life used to be like.
That hasn’t changed.
That’s why I like tattoos with meaning just as much as tattoos that simply look brutally good.
And for me, that doesn’t have to be a contradiction.
A story can be sentimental and still look cheeky. A tattoo can have meaning and still stand out. And above all: it can look damn good.
Bringing these two worlds together is exactly what Ink Flow is about.