With a meticulous eye for detail, Corey Divine creates intricate and beautiful tattoos
It’s easy to become lost while gazing upon the art of Corey Divine. As a specialist in sacred geometry, Divine’s detailed lines blend in with the anatomy of the person wearing the tattoo, somehow standing out while simultaneously appearing as if they’ve always been a part of the body. We spoke with Divine about how he became enthralled by mandalas, the sneaker he created with Dominic Ciambrone and much more.
In second grade, a few class friends were copying the covers from the Goosebumps books. I thought it was so cool! So I started doing it myself. Then the following years, I’d copy some Dragon Ball Z characters and Pokémon.
I always just drew with pencil in school. I started painting a mural on my wall as a teenager once, but it’s really just been drawing and tattooing.
It was probably around 10th grade, 2005. When the show “Miami Ink” came out. I was fascinated and became obsessed.
2005, right away. I did get an apprenticeship a few years later.
I was tattooing anything I could at first. Then I gravitated towards new school color tattooing before getting into my current style, geometric blackwork.
I’m currently tattooing geometric and mandala tattoos. I like to collage different designs together and flow them with a client’s musculature.
I love the aesthetic of them, they’re timeless and used in all cultures around the world.
I definitely zone out and listen to music as I work. I’m usually less anxious when I sit down for the day, locked into a tattoo session for hours. I also use this time to reflect on thoughts—past, present and future.
I had seen a few big connecting-people pieces online and wanted to try it out. I’d love to find some more couples or friends to experiment more on. It can be pretty difficult to pull off if the pieces are very detailed, but sometimes with a minimal design it can be much easier.
I actually started out focusing fully on color. I was doing color for the first half of my tattooing career. I’m not sure exactly why, but one day I switched to strictly black ink and never went back.
I’ve recently gotten into music production. I started learning last May. My friend Adam “MIRR.IMG” has been mentoring me on the music program FL Studio. We’ve done a couple of collaboration songs together, and I’m now starting to really get the hang of it and making my own songs.
I’d like to start meshing my art more with my music, album art, VJ visuals, merch designs, etc. My goal is to DJ my music at concerts and festivals.
Chaim and I have done several collaborations over the years since I first met him in Berlin. He now lives in LA right near me. Our last collaboration was great and with a really nice client. We meshed our two styles together and did her back in one session. I’m sure we will be doing plenty of collars in the near future.
The Shoe Surgeon collaboration was an amazing experience. I’ve been friends with Dom for a few years and we talked about doing a shoe for a while. We finally made it happen. It took a couple of visits to his amazing production studio where we went back and forth on ideas before we laser-etched a design I came up with onto leather and constructed an Air Jordan 1.