Setting ink beneath one’s skin is an expression, unique and sentimental, of the shadows within that have been twisted out. These hard and soft, gradated and bold, hued or monochromatic forms of pigmented words or symbols or shapes or art reveal how we wish to be seen before we are heard. They expose the deepest recesses of our human condition, and become for others a riddle to unfold. But, with us, in time, these secrets slip into their own shadows.

“… and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last.” – Herman Melville, in Moby Dick