Valerie Jane Thompson: Tattoos and Florals
The first time I took notice of Valerie Jane Thompson, was earlier in the winter of 2019. I had walked into The People’s Coffee and was immediately mesmerized by the beautiful illustrations hanging newly on the wall. I fell in love and bought a drawing she made of two hands with tattoos on them, holding gently a red thread. I didn’t realize then that those tattoos would be some sort of foreshadowing for her career as a tattoo artist. As Salt Lily Mag sat down with Valerie, she gave us some more insight into her artwork and her journey as an artist.
Q: How did you start doing art?
A: I’ve always been…ever since I was a kid, I was like drawing stuff. It hasn’t picked up until this year. I didn’t plan on doing anything with it, it was just kind of like a side thing. Then this year, so much stuff changed.
Q: Where does your handle name come from?
A:So, it’s Valerie Jane Thompson…my handle on Instagram is really confusing, cause it was originally for my art, but I put my middle name because I hadn’t ever really connect with that and I feel like when I started drawing, this last year and a half, all the parts of me felt like a stranger.
Q: You started taking art more seriously this year. What was kind of the pivotal moment for that?
A: I quit my job. I was working as a personal assistant, and I was super depressed. I quit with her and she was like, “you should do what you want to do if you’re not going to work for me.” And I had never, not had a back-up plan, when I quit jobs, I always have another thing lined up. I was just tired of working desk jobs, so I quit.
“I would work on those drawings up at People’s Coffee for like 10-13 hours a day, just drawing.” Then I was posting it up on Instagram and it just got a lot of traction. People were super excited about it and I got offered, from a lady that was looking for people to hang up art, and she introduced me to People’s Coffee. Then that led to the job that I have now, so it’s like it’s pretty good.
Q: How did you transition from drawing to tattoo?
A: I didn’t mean to be a tattoo artist either. Because my art was on Instagram, that shop actually reached out to me and they were like, “your art’s really cool. Do you want to be a tattoo artist?” That’s not normally how you get a tattoo apprenticeship’s, but that’s how it happened with me.
Q: What were some of the challenges of the transition into that role?
A: Working with human skin is just so much different than working with paper, there’s a lot to take into consideration. A lot of health department stuff you have to be involved with. It’s just not the same as drawing on skin, there’s just a lot more goes into it, that I don’t think people really understand.
Q: Were you interested in doing tattooing before?
A: I had tattoos before, but I never thought. I feel like I’m a pretty mild person when it comes to the tattoo community. I feel like it’s very male dominant, and I am a soft female, it was for sure not something that I ever anticipated doing. It’s the best job I’ve ever had. I love it with all my heart. I’m just glad I finally fell into something that is worth doing, in my opinion.
Q: Do you there’s a lot of pros with being a female tattoo artist?
A: This is maybe not a pro, but I do think I get treated differently because I am a female artist. Not in like a good or bad way, just something that I’ve noticed. Especially for being an apprentice, guys seem to get hazed more. I don’t know if it’s just me, or if it is because I am female that I just give off an air of like, “don’t tease me”. When you’re a guy and you’re an apprentice they’ll make you like, drink ink, and like clean shit up off the floor…I don’t’ know, it seems like there’s a lot more like frat stuff that they have to go through, but for me, if I don’t know how to do something I can ask how to not do it, and not feel stupid about it.
“I feel like people feel safer coming to me because I am a female tattoo artist.” I do get a lot of first-timers, who do want to come and be with me. I’m glad because my first time getting tattooed was not enjoyable, and I’m actually getting it removed.
Q: What’s your favorite tattoo that you have?
A: That’s hard, cause they all mean something to me. I have one on my shoulder for my dad. He passed away seven years ago so that one’s probably the most meaningful one that I have.
Q: What is it of?
A: I have seven. I’m a baby. Everyone’s like covered, in the shop that I’m in. I have like very sparse tattoos.
Q: I love how feminine your artwork is. It’s very feminine lines and floral, is that kind of on purpose?
A: Yeah, I grew up in a flower shop. I grew up with all sisters, I feel like there was just a lot of feminine energy in my family, and my dad was very supportive of that. I feel like I just don’t know how to be any other way. I just got lucky I guess, haha.
Q: I love the artworks you have with the flowers coming out of the person's head. What’s the meaning behind that?
A: I am obsessed with faces that are mixed with other things. I don’t know what it is specifically to heads and faces, but I used to dream about faceless people a lot, and I feel like that’s just kind of translated into my art style. There’s just something about plants and people, that I really love. This like botanical, earthy, mixture of human and earth.
Q: What’s your creative process?
A: Oh, it is so frustrating. People would probably get so annoyed if they watched me, cause it’s so messy. I actually won’t let my husband come sit with me when I’m creating something. I feel like especially all those girls that are at People’s Coffee, all of those happened in a flash, so I had to hurry and put them down. It took a whole day, but I had to sit down when I got the image and put it down. The middle part is always so ugly. Every single piece of art that I’ve ever worked on, in the middle, I almost give up on it. Every single time.
“Pushing through the middle part, you just have to get past the harshness of it, and just keep going.” There is a point where I have to stop myself otherwise, or I will ruin it. It usually tells me when it’s finished.
Q: You have such clean lines. What medium do you use?
A: I really love to Procreate on the iPad. Before then I was doing watercolor and just pencil drawings, and I really loved Prisma colors. There’s something about the way Prisma colors blend together that gives things a smooth look. If anybody’s interested in art, I recommend getting Prisma colors. They just work like paint, but you can change it.
Q: Are you self-taught?
A: I took classes in High School, but mostly yeah, if I want to learn something, I just force myself to learn how to do it. I had a lot of faceless pictures with hair. I made myself do that because I didn’t know how to do hair, and so I like sat down with some reference pictures and just made myself do it, and all of those are done with pen and pencil. The same thing with the hands, the ones that I have, I just had to figure it out. It’s easier to like grid stuff out first before you start learning, but then you get the hang of it.
Q: How would you say you’ve progressed within this past year?
A: Omg, everything’s changed. I feel like I’m not so worried about what other people think about me anymore. There are still moments that I have, where I’m like, “are people going to like this?” but I think if you are making art so that people will like it, maybe don’t do art.
“I feel like art is such an expression of self and all those girls that are up on the wall are pieces of me that I feel like never established themselves in childhood or maybe are just now establishing themselves.” But if I were doing that so other people would like them, they wouldn’t have ended up on the wall, or even been finished.
Q: Would you elaborate on that? How the girls are pieces of you?
A: There’s a girl with the train going around her, she’s got red hair. I got the flash of her, and then somebody else actually described how they felt about it to me, which is how I felt about it, but I couldn’t put it into words. She’s coming out of the center of this like train track and looking off into the distance. The way that his woman described it to me, she was like “oh, it’s kind of like she was like stuck in this like pattern of thought, or like a train of thought, and chose not to do that anymore, and is going off in a different direction, even though it’s still happening around her, she’s not part of it.” I just feel like so much of my life has changed this year and it’s reflecting in my art and I didn’t mean for it to, but it just kind of happened. I got married this year, people died this year, my whole career path changed this year, and I feel like I’m lucky that I have a career that I can sit down and make things that reflect that. What would you say your hopes are going into 2020? V: Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that a lot. 2020, feels really big. I just feel like I don’t really want, for me personally, I’m not speaking for any other tattoo artist, I just feel like I just want to make tattoos that help people. If that makes sense. I feel like people are very conscious, and at least in the west, of what they put on their bodies. “Maybe I’m being very “woo-woo” about this, but I do feel like if you’re putting negative things on your body, you’re changing your energy and what you put out into the world.” Whether you’re conscious of it or not. I just feel like I really like to make things for people that have a positive impact on their life as well as happy meaning.
You can follow Valerie’s tattooing on Instagram via @janethestranger, where there is a wide range of diverse tattoo’s she has done, that show off her signature style of fine lines and feminine nature. We’d like to note that there is a highlight on her account for any future bookings you might want to pursue, and she asks her clients to please read through that highlight when booking. In a new age where tattoos are the new norm, it’s good for us to know how to communicate and understand our brave artists out there, who provide us with long-lasting artworks to adorn our bodies with.
