Hi, I'm Jonny

My name is Jonny Rhodes. I’ve been drawing and painting for about as long as I can remember. It’s been something that, thankfully, I was always encouraged to do. Growing up I dabbled in just about every kind of creative outlet I could find; model making, pottery, photography, embroidery, print making, life drawing, painting etc.

My superhero origin story really began at 16 though, when I broke my neck in a BMX accident. Waking up in hospital as a teenager, finding out I narrowly dodged death really put a lot of things into perspective for me. When I had recovered, I made it my mission to pursue only what truly brought me joy, and to follow my passions without guilt or hesitation wherever possible. I started learning guitar, and just slowly focusing more and more on studying art where I could.

This eventually brought me to art school in London, where I studied Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art & Design. I found that art school opened up a lot of doors in my mind, but I never really felt like I wanted to belong to the Fine Art scene in the way a lot of the other students there wanted to. I had a few tattoos at this point, traditional stuff that people didn’t really think was all that cool. I had a lot of my early tattoos done at Frith Street in Soho, and I just remember loving how excited it made me feel going down into that basement. Being surrounded by these characters and all this amazing work that I’d never seen anywhere else. This was before social media was really a thing, a world you had to search out and physically walk into to be a part of. It was intimidating and extremely exciting.

After I graduated, I started trying to draw tattoos and figure out how a tattoo design was put together. It was a slow process, as I didn’t have good references or know where to look for good material, aside from some tattoo magazines and comics etc. I also started spending all the money I could save from my job getting tattooed by people I thought did great work. I would try to have small conversations, maybe get some tips or hints, and just try to watch how they worked on my skin, hoping I wasn’t being too annoying! Alongside this, I started training as a shop fitter for a while, mainly to have an option for a sensible job that I could still use my hands in. Eventually I interviewed for a proper position, but got told by my colleague that he knew I really wanted to tattoo, so he wouldn’t give me the job. That same day I marched out with my drawing portfolio to a street shop in South London that I used to cycle past every day to work, and got offered an apprenticeship by a giant Polish Hells Angel and a Hungarian body builder!

I feel very lucky that I managed to get a fairly traditional apprenticeship, something that gets met with a lot of scepticism from new tattooers these days. I wanted to be in a world that was counterculture and a little rough and exciting, that’s what drew me towards tattooing in the first place. I got to experience people who kept me on the straight and narrow, looked after me in their own way, and taught me exactly what I needed to know, all whilst having the occasional wild party of course!

At the end of my apprenticeship I was struggling to afford my rent in London, so I decided to make the move to Copenhagen. I’d dated a Danish girl from my work and done a bit of travelling here. It honestly wasn’t a very well thought out plan, but when needs must, you make a change. I did a bit of couch surfing and got a trial at a shop for a few weeks. My job didn’t allow me leave for the trial, so I just left, and hoped everything worked out! Luckily it did, and I’ve been stuck here ever since.