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Vincent Métayer

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When your father is a sculptor and your mother a portrait artist, creativity is likely to be instilled at a young age, and so it was for Vincent Métayer, born in Macau to French parents. The family left for Paris when he was a baby and returned to Macau when he was ten. 

Today, the 24-year-old feels certain that Macau is where home is and where he feels most comfortable. His interest in psychology led him to enroll in a degree course after high school, only to realize that it’s a “fascinating subject, but in a university setting, I just didn’t like it.”

Wanting to do something with his artistic skills, the same dynamic played out when he went to Hong Kong to study illustration – the university system just wasn’t for him.

It turns out his calling was in fact, much closer to home than he could have imagined. 

“I started seeing tattoos on the street and thinking ‘oh, maybe I can do this, putting my own drawings on people’s skin.’ I really wanted to work in an artistic field and I thought tattooing would be a good solution.”

In 2012, Vincent enrolled in a course of a completely different nature to his previous experiences.

“I went to a tattoo school in Thailand, for a one-month formation course. For the first four to five days we tattooed on pig skins, and on the sixth day they gave us a person to tattoo on. It was all very fast and very intense!” 

The course was a concentrated journey into the world of tattooing – the needles, the techniques, how to stretch the skin, do colour mixing and manage aftercare.

 “There is a lot to learn. It’s not like drawing on paper, skin is a completely different surface to work on. When I finished the course I was still not ready yet. I still had to practice by myself on pig skin, and friends who were willing to offer me some skin to practice on.”

Buying pig skin in Macau to practice on created much amusement for the butchers, who would sometimes offer him free skins because they thought it was so funny. 

Soon after his return from Thailand, Vincent set up his studio space in an apartment owned by his parents on Rua do Lilau. Word of mouth is all it took to get his name out and his business was soon up and running , today with a client base roughly divided 50/50 between locals and foreigners. His equipment comes from Hong Kong, the Netherlands and the US. 

Clients can provide reference images of what they want, which means Vincent needs to be flexible in his style of tattooing. 

 “I prefer drawing something brand new for someone. And of course I have my personal preferences. I prefer to work in black and grey, and I like to draw animals, nature is beautiful.”

Odd requests are never far off, but Vincent remains philosophical: “What one person thinks is weird may have a lot of meaning for another.” 

 “As a tattoo artist I feel I have somewhat of a responsibility for what I am putting on people’s skin. Even if it is their life and decision, there are some tattoos which I may refuse, or advise other options. For example, two girls came in wanting Chinese swear words tattooed and I told them I didn’t want to be the guy who made the tattoo that they would regret all their lives”. 

They heeded his advice, telling him “thank you, you saved us!”

Boyfriend and girlfriend name tattoos also come with warnings: “‘I can do it’ I tell them, ‘but there is a 95 percent chance you will regret it!’” the artist laughs. 

On the damage control side of things, cover-ups are something the artist enjoys doing very much. 

“If somebody has a tattoo they don’t like, having to look at it everyday is horrible for them. If I manage to make the old one disappear with a new one they like, they are happier than normal clients with a first time tattoo.”

There is a lot of psychology involved in this business, and making people feel good is a big part of Vincent’s approach. 

 “I’m starting to do cosmetic tattooing now too; it’s a kind of tattooing that’s not artistic, it’s in the same category as cover up tattoos, for example rebalancing eyebrows.  I’m fixing people through cosmetic tattoos.” 

Also known as semi-permanent makeup, cosmetic tattoos include eyebrows, eyeliner, moles, lip contouring and scar cover-ups and can last for up to five years. 

With no visible tattoos of his own, we had to ask the obvious question – does he have any? 

“I have a very small tattoo, in white, it’s a secret tattoo,” he replies.

Even more intriguing than a tattoo artist with a secret white tattoo is the person he entrusted with the job. On her birthday his mother tattooed “Mum” in French on his ankle. 

It seems the talent runs in the family.  

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