The sepia-toned photograph captures a sprawling churchyard, its weathered crosses and headstones, surrounded by untamed grasses, evoking a scene from a bygone era reminiscent of old New England or a Tales from the Crypt setting. Some stones are etched with names, others are blank, with ample space for future memorials. This isn’t a real graveyard, but a tattoo—a work in progress steadily expanding across the broad back of Randy, a local biker. Each year, as fellow riders journey to the eternal motorcycle rally, more names will join the stones. This inked graveyard is a traditional biker tribute to their departed comrades.
Sarah Peacock, the artist behind this tableau, isn’t exclusively a biker tattooist. Living in Wilmington, North Carolina, a town shared with a vibrant motorcycle community, her clientele is diverse, including college professors, real estate agents, and restaurant staff. Many seek her out to memorialize a lost child, grandparent, or sibling.
“Nothing is more permanent than a tattoo,” Sarah explains when asked about the connection between death and the desire for ink. “There’s no greater symbol than to permanently etch your skin in memory of someone.” She focuses intently on Eric, a middle-aged man with a handlebar mustache, currently under her needle. With swift, precise strokes, Sarah uses long-taper number-twelve stainless steel needles to embed ink into his skin. Her fiery red hair is neatly braided, and her own heavily tattooed skin creates a shifting, grayish canvas as she moves and changes inks. Her clear blue eyes are sharp and focused on her art.
Once finished, Eric’s bicep will showcase three cubist horses galloping forward, accompanied by a gentle pony. These represent Eric’s family, the pony symbolizing his newborn daughter, just a month old. He chose horses for their strength and beauty, but also out of superstition: tattooing names or realistic portraits of the living is considered bad luck.
Sarah’s Yorkshire accent and direct, no-nonsense demeanor, coupled with her own impressive tapestry of tattoos—the first acquired in 1987 in Peterborough, England, a time and place where tattooed women were a rarity—immediately command respect. “I met a woman with a tattoo, the first I’d ever seen,” she recalls. “As soon as I saw it, I knew it was on.” She secretly visited the only tattoo parlor she knew and got a small tribal butterfly on her left shoulder blade. Now faded and overshadowed by countless other designs, it’s a mere memory. Her personal tattoo journey is a blur of experiences, the final artwork almost secondary. She thrives in the present moment, between the ink just applied and the next stroke, anticipating what’s to come with calm focus. Even before she states that her role is to be a steady, guiding presence for clients in distress, her demeanor conveys it.
Her voice, though soft, carries authority, even when speaking over the buzzing needles—hers and her employee’s in the next room. The purpose of my visit is to explore the Memorial Tattoos she’s created throughout her fourteen-year career. Before becoming an award-winning tattoo artist, Sarah was a painter, and portraiture remains her specialty. She inks realistic, sepia or vividly colored images of clients’ idols, pets, or deceased loved ones onto their skin. Memorial portraits are a significant part of her work, accounting for approximately 10 percent of her business.
When crafting memorial tattoos, Sarah often encounters profound grief. Earlier in the year, she tattooed a man whose wife passed away unexpectedly at 38. Working from a photograph, “He said getting the tattoo was his final step in letting go. He cried when it was finished.”
Another instance involved tattoos for the father and brother of a young man in his early twenties who tragically died after a suicide attempt. “The father was almost in tears booking the appointment,” Sarah recounts. “I expected a highly emotional session, but as he got tattooed, he began to talk. Psychologically, booking the appointment seemed to be his act of letting go. The tattoo itself became a celebration.”
The concept of letting go by permanently imprinting an image onto your skin may seem paradoxical. Yet, Sarah observes that memorial tattoos are not a sign of obsession, but rather acceptance.
“I believe that being able to look at an image daily signifies that they’ve moved past avoidance. Initially, there’s often avoidance; they can’t confront the loss. But seeing the portrait every day indicates they’ve reached a point of acceptance.”
Sarah, a yoga practitioner, embraces the philosophy of detachment from material possessions. While recognized as an “award-winning” artist—including accolades like Tattoo Artist of the Year at the 2002 North Carolina State Tattoo Convention and “Best Sleeve” at a 2004 Virginia convention—she downplays these achievements. Her work has been featured in tattoo magazines like Prick and the Discovery Channel documentary The Human Canvas. However, she rarely mentions these accolades. “I’ve thrown them all out,” she says dismissively.
Similarly, she seldom discusses the technical aspects of her artistry, the intricate designs she dedicates hours to. Instead, her focus lies on the client’s emotional journey and the circumstances leading them to seek a memorial tattoo. Only when prompted does she describe the finished piece. For the father and brother’s tattoos, she recalls, “Oh… a portrait of the son at two different ages. The brother wanted to remember him younger, not…,” she pauses, “Well, his brother lost his mind, but the father wanted a portrait from around the time of his suicide attempt.”
Despite her clients often arriving after the initial shock of grief, the emotional weight of memorial tattoo work seems undeniable.
“No,” she counters quickly. “It’s part of the job: staying calm. My role is to ensure the person is as comfortable as possible, while acknowledging their reason for being there.”
Yet, Sarah is not merely a comforting presence. Unlike fleeting comforts, she inflicts physical pain. “Tiny kisses of kittens,” she jokes about the needle’s sting. It’s not just the permanence of the tattoo, but the deliberate discomfort of the process that draws mourners, translating emotional pain into physical sensation, emerging with a lasting, beautiful scar.
Clients undergoing this intense experience often view her as a modern-day shaman. After hours of intimate collaboration, their paths diverge. It’s akin to a friend who supports you through a difficult divorce, whom you then lose touch with once life improves—not out of dislike, but because they become associated with that dark period. While repeat clients are common in her broader practice, memorial portrait clients are often one-time encounters. “I know I’ll likely never see those guys again. Hopefully I won’t.” It’s not animosity, but the opposite—a wish for their continued healing.
This one-time nature of memorial tattoos also means Sarah rarely sees her finished artwork again. The tattoos that grant the deceased a form of continued existence also signify the permanent departure of her creation from her world. She views this as “a good lesson as an artist,” likening it to spring cleaning. “Emptying your surroundings allows you to empty yourself to create more,” she explains. “Nothing is permanent.”
While Sarah has declined countless tattoo requests that didn’t align with her style or standards, she never refuses a memorial tattoo. “No, I don’t mess with memorial stuff. It’s deeply personal.” She will readily create a simple cross and “RIP,” initials, or most other requests.
However, certain designs are discouraged. Superstitions intertwine with life and death in tattoo culture. She advises against tattoos of romantic partners, citing the impermanence of affection—“You’re essentially branding yourself.” She also believes tattoos of living partners bring bad luck. She dissuades clients from inking girlfriends’ names, even spouses’. “I’m like, ‘don’t do it, dude,’” she advises, prompting a chuckle from Eric beneath her needle.
“It’s bad juju to get a name,” Eric agrees.
“It is!”
What about children? Nieces?
Those are acceptable, Sarah clarifies.
Eric disagrees, believing that the same ink that eternally connects you to the departed can sever connections in this life. His superstition leads him to avoid direct references to the living in his tattoos, hence the horses for his daughter. He has no intention of letting her go anytime soon.
American tattooing culture has roots in European sailors, whose unpredictable lives were steeped in superstition. This makes sense; the ocean has always been viewed as both alluring and perilous. Superstitions provide order in an uncontrollable world. We seek cause and effect, creating meaning where none inherently exists to feel secure. Human relationships, like the ocean, are governed by unpredictable emotions and external factors. Superstitions offer a sense of control in the face of this uncertainty. My grandmother believed in holding your breath past cemeteries, pregnant women avoiding funerals, sweeping under a sick person’s bed causing death, and hats on beds inviting misfortune. Disproving these beliefs was impossible, and part of me remained apprehensive. Similarly, one cannot definitively disprove the bad luck of tattooing a living person’s name; one can only point to those who have suffered misfortune afterward. Death, like the ocean or human whims, is unpredictable.
Sarah Peacock has inked a sepia portrait of a four-year-old on a grieving mother’s back. She’s tattooed “cholo” in Old English script on gang members’ chests, and dark teardrops near young men’s eyes—prison tattoos signifying killing or mourning. She’s inked Chihuahuas, husbands, simple and ornate crosses, names on banners, and gravestones with dates.
Randy’s graveyard back piece echoes colonial women’s family quilts featuring fenced graveyards with coffins bearing family names. Coffins were moved to the quilt’s center upon death. But quilts endure generations, displayed in homes and museums. Sarah Peacock’s canvas is living, mortal skin. This vitality and mortality make these memorial tattoos remarkable—portraits of beloved deceased, their likenesses prolonged on living skin in an attempt to lessen the pain of loss. Artworks Sarah hopes never to see again, fading only when the canvas itself is gone.
Reprinted with Permission from American Afterlife: Encounters in the Customs of Mourning by Kate Sweeney and published by The University of Georgia Press, 2014.
