Meet Lachlan “The Mariner”

Lachlan “The Mariner”, 

I grew up between two worlds.

My mother lived in the city. My father lived in the country. So I learned to exist in both.With Mom, I learned the streets. With Dad, I learned the backcountry. I learned to hunt, fish, track, scout, read trails, build snares, and find my way through the wilderness. I also learned how to navigate the chaos of city life.Neither world stayed still for very long.

My father was always moving toward the next job, building something, fixing something, or heading somewhere new. My mother, as well,  moved from place to place and job to job.

But through all of it, there was one thing that never changed.

I drew.

I drew superheroes. I copied Garfield, Hagar the Horrible, Ziggy, Beetle Bailey, The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes, and anything else I could get my hands on. If I couldn’t afford paper, I found something that looked close enough. Butcher paper. Grocery bags. Cardboard boxes. Scraps of colored craft paper.

Now, I was lucky enough to have another mom, My “Mama Judy.”  And when I was at Dad’s, I would sneak over to my Mama Judy’s sewing machine and steal her red pencil. I would grab one of my dad’s carpenter pencils and disappear into whatever world I was drawing.

Drawing gave me somewhere to go. No matter what else was happening around me, I could sit down and create a world of my own.

For most of my adult life, however, art was something I did around the edges of my “real” life. I worked construction. I worked in a lumber mill. I managed for UPS. I sold beer and drove beer trucks. I trained school bus drivers. I worked in IT and eventually became a network administrator.I was always good at learning things. I could pick up trades, machinery, technology, whatever was put in front of me.

But I got bored. So I’d find something else. And somehow, no matter where I went, art followed me. I was always the guy who could draw.

A mural here. A painting for a rodeo queen auction there. A logo for a local bar. Artwork for a beer wholesaler.

My father was usually proud of my ability, but he always had the same advice. “Remember, artists are only famous after they die.” Then he’d laugh and make sure and tell me to get educated, to “put on the suit and tie,” or at least make sure I didn’t spend my life breaking my body without getting paid for it.

My father was a concert pianist who had been a musical prodigy as a child, but he never pursued music professionally. So I listened to him.

For a long time, I did exactly what he told me.

Then, around 2010, a friend watched me create realistic spray-paint artwork and told me I should be doing something with it. I told him, “I can do that.” So he came over, filmed me, put the video on YouTube, and suddenly people were interested.

I sold some paintings. People started recognizing the work. And then, naturally, and as usual, I went back to being Bryan.Work for the family. Draw later.

Until one day a package arrived from that same friend, who had moved back to Arizona.Inside was a tattoo machine, a couple of machines, a foot pedal, a power supply, some practice skin, and a note. “If you can do what you do with a spray pain can, I can’t wait to see what you can do with these.”

So I started learning.

I practiced for a whole six months before I finally couldn’t stand it anymore. I sat down and tattooed my own inner calf, all the way to my ankle, with a twelve-inch dolphin. It took about six hours. Six hours! On myself! The next week…I did the other leg. Then my wife volunteered. Then her friend. Then my sister. Then people started showing up.

So, we tore apart part of our living room and built a little mobile tattoo shop at home. For about a year, I practiced, studied, collected equipment, read everything I could find, sought advice from professional tattoo artists, and eventually found a mentor.

By day, I was a mild-mannered network administrator. By night, I was becoming a tattoo artist.Then one afternoon I came home from work and found my wife in the kitchen with a friend who was a hairdresser. My wife had found a building. She had already signed a lease. She had started the licensing process. She had an appointment with an insurance agent. And apparently, we were opening a professional tattoo shop on June 1, 2012. 

I was given very little time to reconsider my life choices. So, I jumped.

We built the shop ourselves, trading our labor for the deposit and first month’s rent. We spent every dime of our savings on machines, pigment, furniture, signs, and everything else we needed.

On our first day, a young man came in for his eighteenth birthday and asked for a four-leaf clover on his chest. I made forty dollars. I was the proudest man on the planet. I was a professional artist.

Twenty days later, everything changed.

On June 20, 2012, I was riding south with my boss from my day job. We were traveling about 50 miles an hour when a driver who was texting crossed the center line. We tried to avoid the collision. We didn’t make it. I suffered a broken leg, four fractured vertebrae, torn ligaments in my left hip, injuries to my chest and collarbones, and numerous other injuries. The next several years were a fight. But I wasn’t ready to quit. A month and a half after the wreck, I was back in the tattoo shop with my injured leg propped on a stool and my cast wrapped in plastic so I could work safely.

I just kept tattooing. We, the Mermaid and I,  just kept going.

For another six years, we kept going.

Eventually, though, the injuries caught up with me. I lost the use of my right hand for a time. I developed problems with my vision, migraines, numbness in my hands, and uncontrollable seizures in my right hand and arm.

In June of 2018, a doctor finally gave me a choice. Stop tattooing and let them repair what could be repaired, or keep working and accept that they couldn’t help me while I continued. I talked with my partner about it all, and we decided that we needed to close the shop.

So, we closed our dream.

My wife went back to teaching.

I went home.

For six years, I was a house husband and learned how to live with a body that didn’t always cooperate. Then, in 2024, the Mermaid came back around with that look on her face, the same one she had when she told me about the lease she’d signed. She looked at our lives and said, essentially:

“Neither of us is happy. Let’s sell it all.”

Her plan was simple.

Build an off-grid cabin. Travel. Create art. Build a little business. Make a mobile coffee and snack bar.

“I’ll handle the marketing. You make the art. Let’s take our life on the road.”

So here we are.

After a lifetime of being told that art was something to do after the “real work” was finished, I’m finally giving myself permission to find out what happens when I make the art part of the work.

These days, my tools are different.

I draw digitally. I photograph. I fly drones. I create images from the places we travel. I’m learning new ways to tell stories and make art while working within the limitations of a body that has taken a few hits along the way.

And beside me is the Mermaid. She’s still dreaming up questionable ideas. I’m still saying, “I can do that.” Together, we’re building Mariner & Mermaid. Travel inspired. A little wild. A little weathered. Always moving.

We’re not sure exactly where this ship is going.

But after 33 years together, we’ve done dumber things with less money and worse vehicles.

So what else are we supposed to do?

We go.

We make.

We get a little feral.

And we invite you along for the ride.