Mark Mahoney

Mark Mahoney (born 1957 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American tattoo artist widely regarded as a founding figure of fine line black and grey single needle tattooing. Raised in an Irish Catholic family in Boston, he was drawn to the craft as a teenager after visiting a tattoo shop around age 14, and following a brief period at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts he began tattooing professionally in 1977, working in motorcycle clubhouses at a time when tattooing was illegal in Massachusetts. He moved to New York in the late 1970s, where he was part of the downtown punk scene and counted early clients among figures such as Johnny Thunders, before relocating to Los Angeles around 1980; working at the Pike in Long Beach and in East Los Angeles, he absorbed and helped bring to prominence the fine line black and grey style rooted in Chicano culture. In 2002 he founded Mark Mahoney's Shamrock Social Club on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, which became one of the most renowned tattoo studios in the world and a training ground for later artists including Dr. Woo. He has been credited with elevating and popularizing black and grey single needle work as a recognized art form, and he continues to tattoo as the studio's proprietor and principal artist.