“I am a self taught artist.
All my life I’ve loved to
draw, paint or create...”
I remember when I was 18 seeing a friend’s new tattoo. Immediately I knew that this was the genre I wanted to work in. So 1987 I apprenticed as a tattoo artist.
My mission as a tattoo artist, was to use my artistic skills to help clients express their inner visions on their skin, and mark their rites of passage
in a time honoured way. I owned and ran a tattoo studio for many years. In this time I met many fantastic people, who in turn enriched my life experiences; it was very fulfilling to share in this holistic, shamanic experience with them.
Towards the late nineties there were new missions growing deep inside of me that I felt compelled to express, but they were outside of the tattoo genre. So in 1999 I stopped tattooing.
I then visited the USA and Canada. While in the USA, I spent time with the Navajo and Hopi tribes. In Canada I lived and worked with the Huron [Mohawk/Mohican] tribe on their reserve. I feel privileged to have been embraced by these people, some of whose traditions, craft skills and mystical healing arts I now incorporate into my art and my life today.
I am inspired by the unseen, the mystical. When I am painting I go to a different world; a dark and symbolic world. Painting is the medium I feel is best suited to share these visions with you. They are my gift to you.
S. V. Mitchell
Steven V. Mitchell is a very big man.
Standing at six foot 4” he towers over those around him in much the same way that his artworks tower over you: dominating, charming and enveloping. I’ve known Steven a very long time and have had the pleasure of being involved in his artistic incarnations as a tattooist, sculptor and now painter. Steven’s paintings recreate his inner world and make it accessible to the understanding of a very disparate public. Believe me; what he paints IS his world, with the chaotic, sexual and wickedly humorous characters that populate it. For all these visions Steven remains very earthy, more so I think since he has found a medium in which he can express his truth: not many people would be able to laugh as he did when my pup started pissing on an H.R. Giger painting he had propped against the wall in his home. However that is the sort of iconoclast, ribald mischief that occurs in the universe that Steve inhabits and takes us to in his art. I will not say that Steven is an untrained artist: this isn’t true. What I will say is that Steve has not trained in the traditional, ‘art school’ sense. Steven has taught himself with the passion, drive and focus that only those who know the obsessive need to create and communicate could understand. Within a phenomenally short time Steven mastered the difficult skill of using an air brush and the progression of this mastery can be seen in the rapid evolution of his painting. It has never failed to astound me the wide appeal that his work holds: children and adults from many spheres of life all seem to find an aspect of his art that compels and appeals, which is what good art is about. Art is an expression of self that resonates on some level with the viewer creating reaction, and Steven Mitchell’s work definitely achieves this. Steven V. Mitchell is The Lord of Misrule and it is a great thing for all our jaded tastes and sensibilities that we are given this chance to share his wild dance with him! C. Rodgers May 2009