If you define art by its longevity, then Chuck Eldridge says tattooing qualifies, hands down, no questions asked. The Winston-Salem tattooist recounts the story of the famous Iceman known as Otzi.

When explorers discovered Otzi in the Alps in 1991, they found that the oldest human mummy who lived 53 centuries ago had tattoos behind his knees.

Eldridge, a historian of tattoo art, isn’t angling for legitimacy as an artist, though. As a tattooist who’s spent decades painting, onto human skin, images that are as varied as the people who request them, he has nothing to prove.

“I’m not an evangelist,” he says, seated at his drawing table in his downtown Winston-Salem studio. “Tattooing is experienced one person at a time.”

For most visual artists, commerce comes after creation. For Eldridge, the opposite is true. Tattooing originates with a client or friend, and Eldridge draws anything and everything — ships, cartoon characters, angels. “I’m a medium,” he says. “I don’t really have a style. My energy comes from the customer.”

Still, he’s a master of the all around, a man with a steady hand and plenty of flair. Study the detail of his “book mistress” tattoo; look at the harmonious bold colors, notice the glistening waves of her brown curly hair, the light and shadow of her cheeks, and it becomes clear that Eldridge’s artistry is marked by an elegant exactness. The mistress tattoo is at once lush and minimal, a cross between Art Deco and graphic novel. A lot happens inside that circular image, whose diameter measures a mere 3 inches.

Eldridge uses a solid metal needle and about two dozen colored inks to paint flowers, birds, faces, maps, tigers, logos, or text. Like a father with many children, he proclaims to love all images equally, but, truth be told, his favorite tattoos are from the classic, and often patriotic, era spanning from 1850 to 1950.

Whatever the image or vintage, preparation is key for Eldridge, who works in a medium marked by permanence. Before he dips needle into ink, there are consultations, sketches, stencils made, and careful consideration of placement, movement, and size. For months he’s consulted with a man who plans to cover his entire back with an elaborate tribute to Blackbeard. That tattoo, Eldridge predicts, could take three years to finish. It’s an interesting dichotomy that Eldridge’s tattoos are lifelong, yet, once completed, are rarely seen again by the artist.

Eldridge, who is self-taught, likens tattoos to mile markers in people’s lives. A love is born, a notion takes hold, something significant is beginning or ending, and people use their bodies to make those events or beliefs manifest, to vivify them and, in a way, to keep them. 

“People do change,” says Eldridge, who got his first tattoo shortly after enlisting in the Navy in 1965. “Their tattoos become a part of their past.” And when a person’s past stretches decades long, some end up like Eldridge, whose tattoos cover nearly three-quarters of his body. 

As a child, Eldridge’s father’s tattoo of a propeller, a girl’s head, and some lettering fascinated him. His father served in the Air Force in Korea, and his tattoo was reminiscent of his travels.

Back then, Eldridge couldn’t have predicted how MTV and popular culture would invigorate the art. “It’s a generational thing,” he says. “A lot of people used to consider tattoos something only for sailors, drunks, and loose women.”

But as a collector of tattoo art and researcher of the past, Eldridge is eager to inform people that the roots of tattoo art reach well beyond grunge rock and biker culture. There’s a reason Eldridge’s studio, Tattoo Archive, devotes a majority of its space to exhibiting images and artifacts from tattoo art’s storied, colorful, and global history. It’s a gallery designed to welcome you into a past while revealing that the image you may have etched into your skin today is connected to a broader human narrative.

Eldridge is unperturbed by the fact that tattoo art is often excluded from the world of fine art. “Fine art can be stuffy,” he says. And, given that tattoos are bound to flesh and detached from the collectors’ marketplace, that exclusion seems inevitable.

“Tattooing falls somewhere in between folk and fine art,” he says. “But I don’t try to figure that out. I spend most my time looking backwards. It’s hard to move forward in any art form if you don’t know what came before you.”

When did you realize you would live a creative life?
It was early. I always worked with my hands — carpentry, making bicycles. Maybe that came from my dad, who was a brick mason.

Where do you find your inspiration?
From my customers and history. I find it in photographs and old drawings that I find.

What do you do to overcome a creative block?
Every artist has them. Actually what I do is begin with the simplest part. I’ll start with that. I build on that and make it into manageable parts.

What do you think of failure?
It’s just around the corner of every moment, of every day. If you don’t have that fear, I don’t think you produce your best stuff. That fear pushes you. It keeps artists honest. Customers are easier to please in comparison to yourself and your peers.

What quality do you admire in other artists?
Hard work, dedication, respect for the past, humbleness. All those things that you admire in a person in general. It’s all the same for me.

For more information, go to tattooarchive.com