KARMA KIRIN

On curiosity, experience, and the things that shape us.

The journey is never just about the destination.

Tattooing has been a fundamental part of my life, a craft that has taught me patience, discipline, and respect for the stories people carry on their skin. Over time, it has also become a way of understanding people, cultures, images, and the many different ways we make sense of the world.

But the longer I’ve followed this path, the more I’ve realized that what happens around the work can be just as important as the work itself.

The conversations, the places, the books, the unexpected discoveries, the things that catch my attention without an obvious reason. Sometimes an idea begins with a drawing. Sometimes with a story, an image, a journey, or a moment that stays with me long after it has passed.

Looking back, I can see how these experiences have gradually become part of the way I think and create. Not as a collection of references to reproduce, but as pieces of a much larger picture that is always changing.

And perhaps that’s what interests me most: not simply what we create, but everything that leads us there.

I. The Early Years

The early years of tattooing were a time of learning through the work itself: meeting people, concentrating on every line, and discovering what it meant to turn an idea into something permanent. Conventions were part of that world — places to work, meet other artists, exchange ideas, and find my own direction.

Looking back, I can see that tattooing was teaching me more than technique. It was teaching me to look closely, to pay attention to details, and to understand that every image carries something beyond its appearance.

II. The World Opens Up

Curiosity has a way of taking you places you never planned to go.

Japanese tattooing has given me an important foundation, but my curiosity has taken me further: into traditional imagery, mythology, folklore, painting, architecture, manga, and stories that have travelled across generations.

Travel has its own way of opening new perspectives. You can arrive somewhere looking for one thing and leave thinking about something completely different. Sometimes what stays with you isn’t the famous landmark or the expected discovery, but a detail on a quiet street, the atmosphere of a place, or a fleeting encounter that shifts your perspective.

I’ve come to appreciate those moments because they remind me that inspiration isn’t something we can always plan or control. Often, it begins with paying attention.

The challenge is to remain curious without losing your own direction: to learn from what came before, to recognize what resonates with you, and to give those discoveries time to become something personal.

III. Still Becoming

I don’t believe that an artist ever arrives at a final version of themselves.

Our tastes change. Our experiences accumulate. Things that once seemed important may become less so, while something we overlooked can suddenly reveal an entirely new direction.

The work evolves because we evolve.

For me, continuing to create means remaining open to that process. It means respecting the foundations that brought me here while allowing room for questions, experiments, mistakes, and discoveries. It means understanding that having a personal visual language doesn’t require closing the door to the world around it.

This Journal is a place for those explorations. Some entries will be about tattooing and its history. Others may follow a book, an artwork, a place, a personal reflection, or an idea that deserves a little more attention.

There is no single subject that can contain everything I’m interested in, and I don’t want to pretend otherwise.

The only thread connecting it all is the desire to keep looking, keep learning, and keep discovering where the next question might lead.

Because the journey isn’t simply about reaching somewhere new.

It’s about seeing differently along the way.

And continuing to move forward.

Karma Kirin · Revisiting the East.