Glen "Carjack" Paradis
by Damian McGrath

Canadian Tattoo Artist Glen Paradis has been a fixture at New Moon Tattoo for 7 years now. I had met him at several conventions over the years but didn't get a chance to get to know the artist that well until 2008 when he made a road trip with myself, Dan Allaston, Paul Booth, Bob Tyrrell, Kurt Wiscombe, Jack Rudy and a few other artists to Beijing, China for a couple of weeks.

I got to watch him tattoo, and do the social gesturing with the Local artists as well as have him entertain us all with his penchant for car jacking small chinese forms of transportation, much to our amusement, throughout the entire trip.

His artwork can be seen at Newmoontattoo.com and at glenparadis.com and he also did the poster for the 12th Annual Northern Ink Xposure, Toronto's international tattoo convention.

He stopped by the tattoos.com for a chat bouncing between his latest tattoo walkabout.

D - So, when you're not tattooing at the shop, you take off a little time, to go tattoo, or visit other tattooists. That doesn't sound too obsessive.

Glen - Yeah, I am taking a week off to spend a couple days at Matt Ellis' and George Brown's new shop, Seven Crowns in Toronto, I tattooed a cover up on George's forearm, in exchange for a tattoo he did on my foot at the Ottawa show last month just before Halloween.

D - And after you grace us with this brief visit, you're off to see the crew at Tora Tattoo in Kitchener for a couple days?

Glen - Yeah I am going down there for a road trip, and to check out the studio, never been there before, always meant to go and wanna get some tattoo work done by him.

D - But you've worked with him and Dan.

Glen - Yeah, Dan Allaston and Jamie always share booths and work together, so I've gotten to know him since NIX in 2004, and shared booths together at the first Calgary Convention.

D- So you got to know Jamie through Dan and New Moon, which you started at seven years ago? Is that where you started out?

Glen - Yeah that's where I started out, I approached Dan who initially told me to screw off, no apprenticeships, so I started gettin tattooed by Sharon, a lady form England doing a guest spot, then Dan, and kept gettin tattooed by Dan, a big rib piece in 1993, and kept on bugging Dan and coming by with drawings, and I hung around, for quite a few years. Once it was determined I wasn't gonna be a troublemaker, I started my apprenticeship and I've been there ever since.

D - So you started your apprenticeship in 2000 and then went to full time tattoo artist when Dan opened the new studio in Orleans?

Glen - Yeah it's suburb East of Ottawa and I've been at that studio since it opened in 2002.

D - And of course you have added traveling to the conventions and working with other artists as a hobby in your spare time when not tattooing.

Glen - Yeah it's been great to meet all the artists that I want to learn from and coming back newly inspired from a show and to keep creating. Last summer I got to do the Art Fusion with Paul Booth, Kurt Wiscombe, Alex Adams, and Hailin Fu, in an old Cathedral, that was a blast, I learned more in one night than I had in a while, and it changed the way I even approached painting.

D - Yeah, I've seen your artwork on your personal site, some of it has a humorous touch, and it has it's style, a post apocalyptic sarcasm would you call it?

Glen - That was a series that I started off with the Rocket space goat, and it became a series of farm animals all mechanized and ready for battle.

D - Yeah I found them pretty funny and thought a change of style for the convention poster for NIX would be great after ten years of, "will it be a dragon or a skull this year?".

Glen - Yeah, I came up with a couple ideas, and then we settled on the idea of the tank girl esque futuristic scene. It was a pleasure to do that and I recently discovered oil painting. I'm actually taking a class I've only been doing for a month and a bit. It's opened my eyes to a whole new medium, it makes you slow down a bit, and because the paint doesn't dry right you can take a break, think about it and go at it fresh again, and pick up where you left off. Plus, it looks good.

D - So now you seem to me to have fallen into the whirlpool of tattooing, painting, drawing, and using your spare time to collaborate with other artists or travel to conventions on vacation like so many real tattooists do.

Glen - Yeah I try to go to a few conventions a year, I got to tattoo with a great group of guys in Beijing, and tattooed in Cuba while on vacation.

D - Really, what's the tattoo scene like down there, do a lot of Che portraits.

Glen - Actually it is a pretty big scene down there, it is still underground, because private enterprise is a no go, so everything is strictly word of mouth. My diving instructor asked me about my tattoos, and we noticed a girl with a new tattoo and got my scuba instructor to call the artist and arranged a meeting. Went to meet him in Santa Marta and I ended up tattooing him and his brother, koi fish and dragons on each of their shoulders.

D - So what's on the radar next for you?

Glen - Yeah the Southern Ink Xposure, in Cape Town, South Africa, I'm looking forward to that, and the Maritime Tattoo Festival in Halifax in the spring, and of course NIX again this summer, Montreal and plan on going back to Calgary this year. I think I wanna try to get out to Europe next for a show.

D - Like you don't have enough on the go, if folks want to book work they can just go to Glen paradis.com and email you or stop by the studio in Ottawa. Thank you kind sir.

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