3D
Animation
Painting
Isabel Lauren Loewe
Sep 15, 2025
James Dimmick
In the years since James Dimmick picked up a tattoo gun, the self-taught artist has found himself caught between the spiritual and the material worlds. His work, which moves between tattooing and painting, feels both grounded and philosophical, shaped by a lifelong fascination with discomfort and the subconscious.
Raised in a lower-class family, Dimmick turned to art as a kind of escape. He spent hours painting ornate, Victorian-style figures as a rebellion against the roughness of his upbringing.
Today, his work reflects that same tension between beauty and unease, filtered through a worldview that challenges both religious and artistic conventions.
Would you say you gravitate towards things that make you uncomfortable?
Yeah, the most interesting things to me are the things that make me uncomfortable.
Was tattooing something you thought about doing as a kid? Was it just bound to happen, or was it more of a conscious decision?
I never thought of it, as a kid, as a profession. I didn't think of professions as a kid. I wanted to be a police officer because my whole family did drugs, so I wanted to do the opposite.
So you like to go or do the opposite a lot?
No, I don't think I think in opposites. I think duality is an illusion. I think maybe I like to go against things. Anything that I'm drawn towards is like the same kind of thing. My subconscious is directed towards that. Whether I'm repelled by it or if something makes me uncomfortable. There's a reason why, and I need to explore that because my subconscious is reacting to it.
Would you say you gravitated towards tattooing because of the certain connotation that is attached to it?
Tattooing has made me feel weird for a long time. Like, I feel maybe we are divine and we shouldn't be marking up our bodies, and I'm so self-critical of my work, in general, it feels wrong to put that permanently onto other people. Especially with my girlfriend, she's beautiful, and giving her a tattoo just feels wrong cause she just seems perfect as it is, you know? I don't want her to get bad tattoos, so I'm doing them, but it doesn’t always feel right. No one knows if it's right or wrong; it might be that our bodies aren't divine, and we're supposed to escape the material world of suffering and to actualize ourselves. Either way, I think the world is either everything is by God, it's perfection, and we're supposed to observe it. That would mean, to me, that art is just an ego where you're acting like you're creating something, but you're just copying what God has already perfected. You're making a lesser version of it and saying that it's your creation. The duality of that is this world is imperfect, and we suffer unnecessarily, and there's a way to escape it.
The fact that you were born into a lower-class family, do you think those things push you to paint in some capacity?
Yeah, maybe that's the escapism because I started painting those Victorian-type girls, and that was me rebelling against my middle-class or low-class, white trash culture that I came from. I wanted to paint the opposite.
Those paintings feel very royal.
Yeah, it was escapism from the chaos. I would paint prettier things as an escape from the chaos of how I grew up, or just the internal chaos. Inside, it just felt so turbulent, so I wanted to paint something pretty, and I still feel that way a lot.
Is there a certain takeaway you would want people to get from your art?
I'm not sure if I want anyone to take anything away from my art. I'm kind of neutral on it. I just make it because it's what I feel like doing. I don't need anyone to approve it or think of it as interesting or cool. I think it's most important to do the work for yourself. Get out of your head and create what you think is interesting
James Dimmick
How would you practice not being in your head?
You work, just always work. It’s hard, though, because you start thinking about whether it's good or not. I mean, most of the time I fail at that, about nine out of ten times I’m painting, I fail at not being in my head. Then there's the one time when I don't and I finish something and I'm happy with it, but it's something you have to work on.
How have you worked on that?
I try to go into things with absolute confidence. When I go into a painting, I think, ‘Okay, you're a creative genius. You know what to paint. This is what you're meant to do.’ It’s just absolute confidence because if you don't have that, you're inside your head, and you're just going to make garbage anyway. We're taught that having confidence in yourself is a bad thing and that you're being egotistical. But you can believe in yourself and create something positive.
Is there anything about the modern approach to science or spirituality that either bums you out or excites you?
I think art right now is exciting because of AI. We're getting a real look at what the collective thinks is aesthetic. Because AI doesn't make ugly things, it makes what we think is the best version of what we're trying to create. You tell it to make a girl, and it makes the most beautiful girl. Even if you tell it to make an ugly girl, it’s the perfect version of an ugly girl. It's creating something from our collective consciousness or unconsciousness, and that's exciting to see. We're forced to explore new territories. I think art is over in the general sense of what we thought it was. I think that's completely over because it can make things perfect, or what humans think is perfect. The more we contribute to it, the more perfect it can make things.
So you don’t think AI is bad or scary?
No, I think AI is going to make the general public more creative. Everything is going to become hyper-creative, like anyone can make music now, and going forward, it's going to be the ideas. It's not whether you had an upbringing that allowed you to learn an instrument or a teacher to teach you art theory. As a human being, you're the purest part of the creative process, your ideas. AI is liberating us from our human limitations. Being technically good at art or music takes a lifetime. Now everyone can create, and I think everyone should, and I think that'll actualize people.
Can you define what you mean by actualization?
I think to me, actualization is the beginning process of being disillusioned with what you've been given. When you're young, people teach you all the labels, and when you realize that all of the labels are just made up, you become disillusioned. Nothing is what it seems; everything is new, and you now have to figure out what serves you and what is just bullshit that people made up. I think that's happening in our culture right now.
We’re in an unraveling of some core values that we had as a society, and right now, it’s occurring alongside the AI revolution. Artists are in upheaval, and it’s very normal to become disillusioned.
I think people are becoming disillusioned every day at a crazy speed. Every interaction with AI is a creative act because you have to think of a prompt, and you have to create an idea to give to it.
That doesn't require much creativity, not like learning how to have a faster technique.
I think the technique is the mechanical part of our brain, and the creative part is the idea.
So with AI, people can bypass the mechanical part?
Yeah, it's becoming just about the idea, the artistic ideas and process, not about whether you can mechanically do it or not. So many people have deep creativity within them, but they can't mechanically do it. You can learn to paint well or technically draw well, but it takes a lifetime to learn those things, and those things are just the mechanics of creating. What I think makes the most interesting art is not the technique, it's the ideas behind it.
James Dimmick
What about developing new or specific techniques?
Yeah, developing a technique, I guess it's the ideas you're applying to the technique. I guess it depends on how you're making your art, are you making your art around the technique, or are you making your technique the idea? I guess if you learn a traditional technique, that’s a mechanical thing. You’re just learning a mechanic, and you’re not making anything new; you assume a mechanical process.
Or style too, because that’s an idea as well. You have a very specific style. Could you speak on that?
Style is whatever your subconscious is drawn to, so take from everything and whatever is interesting to you. However you put it together is going to be something new, even if you're using an old style. It's going to be filtered through you, so it's new.
With AI, do you feel secure in your profession? Because AI doesn't look like they're going after tattooing.
Well, we thought AI was going to go for manual labor jobs and truck driving and stuff first, but it didn't. It went straight for the arts. We thought that we were some spiritual animals that could create like no other. But then we thought that art was above technical processes and mechanical processes, but it’s not. It took the arts first, so we have to think of a new way to be artistic and creative. I'm not worried about my job, though. It may take over tattooing. If there's a mechanical arm that can tattoo perfectly, then that's great. I think being creative is all about curating and pivoting.
Why do you think it’s important to explore what makes you uncomfortable?
If it's making you uncomfortable, that’s your subconscious telling you to look at it and examine it, figure out why it's making you uncomfortable. We usually run from what makes us uncomfortable, but I think it's best to go towards it. We run from things all the time. We don't notice we're running from them, but we are.
Is there anything specifically you wanted to talk about?
Yeah, I think the main thing I wanted to get out of even being public or doing an interview is that certain people feel strange in their surroundings, and that's a good thing; you should go towards what makes you uncomfortable. I think there may be certain people who are different from the group that are meant to make culture move forward, and you should lean into those things. You should explore that, and what you think is counterculture is usually culture too. If it's counterculture, it's the same as culture, you know? So listen to your subconscious and see where it's leading you, and lean into whatever you find interesting.
Yeah, I think that’s a great message. It’s very universal.
I think certain people have certain things they need to give to the world and the culture. If you feel that, lean into that. If people think that's ego, if they say you’re being egotistical because you believe in yourself, that's okay, just lean into it. As long as you're not hurting other people. It's okay to believe in yourself and to think that what you're doing is cool.
