Artists Profile

Zealand Tattoo employs only widely experienced and highly skilled tattoo artists

Zane Swanston – Owner of Zealand Tattoo                                        zane

Zane Swanston has excelled in Art all of his life in numerous types & forms including Pencil Sketching, Water Colours, Oil Painting, Glass Paintings, Murals, Clayworks, Air Brushing and Sculpturing.

Throughout his school years, he won many Art competitions and developed a strong interest in Tattoo Art from the age of 16 years. So commenced his self taught education in the Skin Art Industry. He quickly displayed above average ability in this field and was mentored by one of Christchurch’s leading Tattoo artists, Leonard Brown (an apprentice of Steve Johnston).

For Zane – Art is quite literally in his bloodlines as he comes from a long heritage of budding Artists. His grandmother (on his mother’s side) was an exhibiting Oil Painting Artist, his mother excelled in craft arts, both his father and uncle displayed excellent Artistic abilities and his sister successfully completed a Bachelor of Arts and majored in Print Making.

He opened his first Studio at the age of 21 and has progressed through a total of four tattoo studios to date. He has over 22 years experience in niche, timeless tattoo design/Skin Art genres and has personally trained a number of apprentice tattoo artists over the period. Zane has grown to become one of the most sought after specialised tattoo artists in New Zealand at the present time who possesses both an extremely keen artistic ‘eye’ for detail, together with a real and tangible Art “X Factor”.

Ray Oved – Contracted Tattoo Artist

August saw the introduction of Ray Oved of ‘Rayz Ink’ to the Zealand Tattoo Team.150325_1514499829189_1435251271_31244099_8348324_n

Ray had been running his own tattoo business for 5 years but decided to follow a new path in August. Having thoroughly researched Christchurch-based tattoo studios in search of the best, he found us and approached us with the hope of working at Zealand Tattoo. On viewing his portfolio we quite literally ‘snapped’ him up for an immediate start and saw him as as much of an opportunity to our business as we are to his. Ray has rapidly become an asset to Zealand Tattoo and we are looking forward to a busy summer season with him onboard.

Ray is an extremely skilled tattoo artist, with an exceptionally steady hand his line’s are precise and even. He whips up new and unique designs tailored for each individual client in the bat of an eyelid. Ray’s niche is ‘portraiture’ (the most difficult artform for a tattoo artist), he is so good he has even performed beautiful portraits on his own skin! However, by no means is he limited to this style of art… the last month alone has seen him producing Maori, Samoan, Oriental, Old School, Feminine Ornamental, and Lettering art to name just a few. There is no wonder that Ray  has quite a following in Christchurch with client’s asking for him by name on a daily basis.

In short Ray, it is a pleasure to have you working with us at Zealand Tattoo and a pleasure to witness the amazing art that you create every day!