Les Bowen of Second Skin Tattoo on his start in tattooing and how the industry has evolved

If you’ve gotten a tattoo in Townsville, chances are it may have been done by Les Bowen, who has been tattooing now for 66 years. HIS STORY >

Owner of Second Skin Tattoo, Les Bowen has been tattooing for 66 years. Picture: Nikita McGuire

If you’ve gotten a tattoo done in Townsville, chances are it may have been done by Les Bowen, who has been tattooing now for 66 years.

With enough awards to fill a whole room, his career has seen him travel to conventions across the other side of the globe, and become known worldwide as one of the original Aussie tattoo artists.

He’s even been recognised in places like Las Vegas and Hawaii by people who he’s tattooed in the past.

Along with his wife of over 50 years, Robyn, they run Second Skin Tattoo in Kirwan – Townsville’s longest-established tattoo studio which was first based in the CBD opposite the old Flinders Street Station.

Owner of Second Skin Tattoo, Les Bowen has been tattooing for 66 years. Picture: Nikita McGuire

The 83-year-old tattoo artist has seen the tattoo industry change over the decades, from a time when it was taboo and rare to see a person walking around with a tattoo – to modern times where it is not uncommon for people to have pretty much their entire bodies covered.

“Tattoo culture was connected to carnivals,” Mr Bowen said.

He said he sees heavily-tattooed people daily in Townsville, who back in the day would have been a spectacle.

“There was a man named Valentine Green that was a friend of mine in my formative years and he made his living as the tattooed man,” he said.

“Now if he walked down the street no-one would turn their heads.”

Owner of Second Skin Tattoo, Les Bowen has been tattooing for 66 years. Picture: Alix Sweeney

His love of tattooing began when he showed an interest in his father’s tattoos.

“My old man had a picture of a frog tattooed on him, with an umbrella sitting under a toadstool and it was very crude, because tattooing at that time was a very crude art form,” he said,

“I looked at the frog and it fascinated me. I used to try and recreate it. I was well and truly entrenched. I was a good artist and I was very interested in art. I wanted to get a tattoo.”

“I not only got interested in it, it became my entire life’s work.”

His first experience in tattooing came when he was given a go at it by an artist in Brisbane named Norm Collette, a “big artist back in the day”.

“He worked as a taxi driver during the day and a tattoo artist by night,” Mr Bowen said.

“This is back when it was a very guarded, almost secretive business.”

Les Bowen in his early tattooing years

Mr Collette did a tattoo for Mr Bowen’s friend, which Mr Bowen told him was “not good”.

“I told him I thought I could do it better,” he said.

“He got indignant and said ‘it’s not as easy as you think, if he’s silly enough to let you, you can have a try.”
This lead to Mr Bowen tattooing his friend, which he said turned out “quite good”.

“So then, full of bravado, I said let’s do another one on my mate,” Mr Bowen said.

“The second one wasn’t as good, the first one must have been because I was hyped up.
Nevertheless, that moment became the start of Mr Bowen’s now 66-year career.

Tattooing runs in his family’s blood, with three of the couple’s five kids going on to become tattoo artists and several grandkids – bringing the family total to 9 artists.

On the biggest change he has seen in the tattoo industry over the decades, Mr Bowen said the growth of women getting tattooed and women tattoo artists has changed the game.

“The big explosion in the industry was, girls were considered a no go-zone when I was young and particularly when I started back in the 1950s any way, girls were not tattooed,” he said.

Les Bowen at work

“They may have had some tiny, discrete tattoos where they could chose to show it or not show it. Then there were a few rebellious women that got tattooed openly, but they were extremely rare.”

“Now it’s the total opposite. I see so many girls that have tattoos and so many great female artists.”

Mr Bowen also said the way tattoos are done has drastically changed as technology has improved, with the first handmade tattoo guns using materials such as bike parts and pieces of shoe.

“You’d go and buy an old gramophone and you’d break the spring out of that, that used to wind the gramophone and you would cut the spring into pieces and punch holes in it,” he said.”

“The needle bars were made out of bicycle spokes. You would get a boot sole and cut a small piece of rubber and push the needle into the rubber.”

While he is still a practising artist, Mr Bowen now takes appointments at his shop with a focus on “authentic old-school” tattoos.

Originally published as Les Bowen of Second Skin Tattoo on his start in tattooing and how the industry has evolved