The Tattooed Portraits Series started in 2005 as a (means) to document Artists with tattoos, Tattoo Artists, the tattooing process / experience, and the history of contemporary tattooing. To specify the work would be to classify it as visual journalism- from the perspective of the artist, Shawn Barber. As a professional artist and educator for a dozen years, Shawn has been a prolific fine artist and a productive illustrator.


Memoir: Tattooed Portraits is Shawn Barber’s third monograph in the Tattooed Portraits Series. An in depth study of tattoo culture and contemporary tattoo history through fine art paintings. This edition contains photographs, paintings and essays chronicling a 6 year living journal.


This full-color fine art book showcases a select group of paintings in Shawn Barber’s portraiture series on well-known contemporary artists and tattoo artists. The paintings range from traditional representational portraits to colorful, expressionistic abstractions. Through his refined skills and modern expressionistic techniques, Shawn’s paintings are complex emotional responses to the subject being tattooed, the history of contemporary tattoos and the artists pioneering the craft of tattoo; Including paintings of Don Ed Hardy, Bob Roberts, Grime, Paul Booth, Marcus Pacheco, Kim Saigh, Jack Rudy, Thomas Woodruff, Aaron Cain, Mike Giant, Adrian Lee, Margaret Cho, Shige and Stanley Moskowitz .