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i'm matthew murray and i'm ryan murray
we're identical twin brothers of the
blackfield studio in salem massachusetts
and our work is heavily inspired by the
death and morning etiquette of new
england's victorian pastimes
i think tattooing is free-flowing and
you can kind of you kind of just get
lost in it and you're not really
thinking so much as like
as much about like composition and stuff
because that's all set the skeleton is
already like laid out and everything too
so you're not really thinking about
where things need to be placed as much
so i think i enjoy the tattooing process
more i mean it's all it's all a lot of
fun but
i like being able to like start like
seeing it to come together as a piece
ryan and i primarily only work in black
and gray scale compositions are usually
like pretty loose it's like we don't
draw all the fine lines usually like in
our initial line drawing that's going to
be the tattoo so it's you know once we
put it on it's kind of open to
interpretation like once we get going
trying to make sure that it's like going
to be the perfect shape for where like
where on the body that it's going to end
up going
and
having like a nice flow to it and then i
know just making sure that it's like the
best piece that it can be
we've been together
um
yeah since we're born pretty much i
think that like the longest amount of
time that we've ever been part fours
maybe a couple of weeks the most
my parents always dress us the same yeah
we're like the male versions of the
shining
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we moved to santa we were about 19 years
old and we've been here ever since
it's kind of been like a really good
inspiration and platform for you know to
kick off our art career obviously salem
is known mostly for the salem bush
trials of 1692 where you know there are
many innocent people that were sentenced
to death for being accused of witchcraft
and that's something that's always going
to haunt the history of salem
you can see a lot of that carried over
into our artwork that has fascinated us
since we've been um
kids you know we've both always
illustrated and we were painters before
tattooing so that was like our first
true love i think painting
so today i'm working on my friend justin
um
and we're doing uh working on a raven
that's
from his kneecap to his armpit it's
actually a crow and then it's carrying a
skull
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crows have always been like fascinating
to me so
just to have such a large
uh
piece on him that is a crow is just
pretty special i think
and uh we became friends through it
because we sat together with
probably like over 20 hours between the
two pieces
you have more shows and stuff set up
yeah i'm writing written new music but
no shows playing
today i'm doing a touch-up on her
on her
our shin
it's kind of the whole uh saying that uh
you know you can't
burn a witch forever you know we were
the witches and sam you weren't able to
burn so
being local and you know the love of you
know witchcraft and everything else of
course it was an appropriate piece and
none other than trying to do it
beautifully grim morbid but it just
everything tells a story and each just
pass he does with a needle so it's just
it's the best
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even every single day now like when we
finish the tattoo like the person our
client might think that they're finished
but i'll bring them to go show ryan the
tattoo and ryan will be like i think it
needs like a little more black here or
like a couple like lines here
i think it's like really helped us build
the style together instead of separately
so
now instead of us just like having our
own things going on too like it's almost
kind of hard to
like see the difference in our work
sometimes too yeah our style has always
been growing and evolving together
i think being twins definitely plays a
role in um
in working together to make make
stronger pieces of artwork
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