Let’s take a moment to appreciate the serendipity — when your first name is Kennipoke and you grow up to become a tattoo artist, your moniker feels as predestined as your talent. Denmark’s kenni poke is now officially 17 years into his career, but the concoction of his style — which doesn’t sit cleanly in any category — goes even farther back. As soon as he could pick up a crayon, he was drawing incessantly. Then came a deep infatuation with graffiti, which led him to obsess over composition and how shapes can be read as motion when you know what you’re doing. A million sketchbooks and walls later, as he dipped his hand in tattooing, he found his discipline had already paid off — the language he had finessed worked even better when dealing with the three-dimensionality of the human body. Conciliating traditional line work with smoother elements and adding in just the right amount of depth, he’s come up with his very own brand of artistic gravitas. His designs simply settle onto skin like they were meant to be there long before the appointment was ever booked. Serendipitously, you could say.
