I’m Ray Palfi, founder of TatSwitch, and I’ve been tattooing professionally since March of 1999.
My career started in St. Louis, Missouri, at a very different time in tattooing. There was no Instagram or endless stream of artists online. If you wanted to see what the best tattooers in the world were doing, you found their work in tattoo magazines, at conventions, or, if you were lucky, by traveling and working alongside them.
One of my favorite things to do on my days off was go to a bookstore with a coffee shop inside, grab a stack of tattoo magazines, drink coffee all afternoon, and study the work.
I remember looking through those magazines thinking, Man, these guys are really good.
Artists like Joshua Carlton, Robert Hernandez, and Paul Booth were among the people whose work I studied and admired. At the time, black-and-gray was what interested me most, and I became determined to keep working until someday I could produce work at that level.
I definitely didn’t start there.
And after more than 27 years, I still don’t believe an artist ever reaches a point where there’s nothing left to learn.
Never Be the Best Artist in the Room
One of the greatest things tattooing gave me was the opportunity to travel.
Over the years, tattooing has taken me from the East Coast to the West Coast, including places such as Philadelphia, Buffalo, New York, Missouri, Arizona, California, Las Vegas, and eventually Oregon.
I loved guest spots and tattoo conventions because they put me around artists who were better than me.
I’ve always believed:
You’re never going to get any better by always being the best person in the room.
Sometimes being around incredible artists was intimidating.
At a convention in Pomona, California, in 2007, I watched Roman Abrego and Mike DeVries working together using first-generation pneumatic tattoo machines. They were producing full-color portrait tattoos that absolutely blew me away.
I remember thinking, Wow. Maybe I need to quit. I don’t belong here.
But instead, it had the opposite effect.
I thought about everything it had taken to get that far—the apprenticeship, the long hours, the mistakes and the work—and realized there was no point going through all of it just to become stagnant.
So I kept pushing.
Years later, I even had the opportunity to work alongside Joshua Carlton, one of the artists I had studied in those magazines when I was coming up. Being able to sit in a tattoo shop and talk tattooing with someone whose work had inspired me years earlier was something I’ll never forget.
Rest in peace, Joshua. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and your art with the world.
I’ve also had the privilege of serving as a judge at the Evergreen Invitational tattoo convention—another experience I never would have imagined when I was the young artist sitting in a bookstore studying tattoo magazines.
More Than Putting Ink in Skin
My passion is still black-and-gray and photorealism, and over the years I grew to appreciate strong, bright color as well.
But some of my favorite tattoos today happen when there is room to freestyle—to have a tattoo machine in my hand, skin as the canvas, and enough trust from the client to let the artwork develop naturally.
Tattooing has also taught me that what we do can mean much more to someone than simply putting a picture on their body.
I once worked with a woman who had areas of scarring and pigment loss on her hand. When we first met, she was visibly self-conscious and kept her hands covered. We discussed what cosmetic tattooing could and couldn't realistically accomplish, including the possibility that color could change over time and require touchups.
When she returned later, she walked into the shop with an entirely different confidence.
That moment stayed with me.
I realized I hadn’t simply put pigment into somebody’s skin.
I had helped someone feel better about herself.
I’ve experienced similar moments doing restorative tattoo work for women following breast surgery. Experiences like those changed the way I thought about this profession.
A tattoo can commemorate someone.
It can help someone reclaim part of themselves.
It can give somebody confidence.
And sometimes it can simply make somebody feel like the coolest person on the block.
All of those reasons matter.
That’s also why I've become selective about the people I tattoo. I believe tattooing involves a genuine exchange between artist and client. Both people should feel comfortable, respected, and safe. Some of my longtime clients have become genuine friends because the experience became about much more than the tattoo itself.
An Artist Who Always Wanted to Build Things
Long before I became a tattoo artist, I liked building things.
Even as a kid, I was constantly making gadgets and experimenting with whatever I could get my hands on. My father was a machinist, and I learned a great deal from watching him and working with things mechanically.
Once tattooing became my career, that same curiosity naturally found its way into tattoo equipment.
I studied tattoo machines. I experimented with building them. I built foot switches. And I hand-made more tattoo needles than I could possibly count.
Tattooing was different then.
I still remember late nights sitting in front of the television with a soldering iron, making needles for the following week—and sometimes trying to make enough for the whole month so I wouldn't have to do it again the next night.
There is actually part of me that misses it.
Making the tools was part of being a tattooer.
From Tattoo Artist to Inventor
Years of tattooing eventually take a toll on your body.
Between an old neck injury from a car accident and decades spent tattooing in positions I probably should have listened to people when they told me to correct, my body eventually stopped cooperating with the 10- and 15-hour tattoo days my mind would still happily work.
I haven't lost the desire to tattoo.
I just had to change the way I do it.
Stepping away from tattooing full-time gave me something I hadn't had before: time to return to an idea that had been sitting in the back of my mind for years.
That idea became TatSwitch.
The more time I spent designing, building, testing, changing and improving it, the more I realized I wasn't simply building a switch.
I was building the next chapter of my life.
Tattooing taught me how to create. Traveling taught me to learn from people better than myself. My clients taught me how much the things we make can affect another person's life. And decades of actually working with tattoo equipment taught me that sometimes the people best positioned to improve the tools are the people who use them every day.
TatSwitch gives me the opportunity to bring those parts of my life together.
I can still tattoo.
I can still create.
I can build again.
And hopefully I can take what I've learned over more than 27 years in this industry and use it to make something that makes another tattoo artist's job a little easier.
Because I'm still learning too.
And I hope I always will.
— Ray Palfi
Founder & Inventor, TatSwitch
“Tattoo artists don't die. We just fade away.”