A good friend of mine. One of those generically lovable millennials who works in marketing and never uses a bookmark because she never actually finishes a book. She got married last spring. Instead of wedding rings she and her now husband decided to get matching tattoos. The design was something ambiguous but obviously meaningful. Two overlapping ellipses filled with negative space. No names. No dates. No ornate calligraphy. Just a pair of mathematically adjacent ovals permanently needled into their left wrists. I remember asking her if she worried she would regret it someday and she just laughed. “Art is about regret” she said. Which struck me as a surprisingly good answer for a person who just redefined a legally binding marriage contract as a collaborative open-ended piece of conceptual art. It made me wonder if this is what art actually is. Not some grand expression of genius but simply the personal made permanent.

If you are inclined to believe that then Pedro David Lara Anton — better known in the inked-up corners of the world as David Anton — is probably closer to a philosopher than just another guy with a tattoo gun.

In contemporary society tattoos exist in this strange liminal space. They are deeply personal yet totally public. They feel rebellious and mundane at the same time. A century ago having visible tattoos branded you as some kind of criminal or sailor or carnival curiosity. Today roughly one out of every three American adults has at least one and the Museum of Modern Art is more likely to show you a sleeve than a Monet. And yet people still struggle to articulate why they get them. Anthropologists and people who go to Burning Man will tell you a tattoo is like a portable ritual object. A story you carry with you. An identity made visible.

David Anton does not just believe that. He has built his entire career on it.

Born in Lima Peru Anton trained at the IEE Mercedes Indacochea Lozano learning anatomy and the fundamentals of classical painting before he ever held a tattoo machine. He has the kind of obsessive technical knowledge that makes you think he was raised in some Renaissance atelier rather than a South American art school. His early work — hyperrealistic black and gray portraits and full color pieces that look like three dimensional prints of actual photographs — blew people away. One professor said his tattoos have the kind of detail and depth that “shouldn’t even be possible on skin” which sounds hyperbolic until you actually see one.

But what separates Anton from the usual realism wunderkind is that he is not content staying there. He is moving toward a new hybrid of surrealism and abstraction. The kind of thing that feels just a little beyond your grasp even though it is permanently etched into somebody’s calf. He says this is part of “ascending to a higher level” as an artist which sounds dramatic until you realize that his whole artistic ethos revolves around competing only with himself.

What he really wants is to connect with clients who crave something deeper. People who understand that tattoos are not just ornamental but collaborative. His recent full leg piece exploring maternal love and intimacy was not just a technical tour de force. It was a dialogue. A story that could only be told through the strange intimacy of needle and skin.

He finds inspiration in weird places. Colors in nature. Split second emotions. Awkward coincidences. He subscribes to the idea that you do not wait for inspiration. You let it find you working. Which is why he keeps working. Even when things go sideways even in what he calls “the most catastrophic scenarios” he keeps working. Because if you do not the dream disintegrates.

This mindset has not just made him beloved among clients. It has made him a global ambassador for the art form. Sponsored by elite brands like Radiant Colors Ink and Hi Tattoo Official Anton has been racking up international awards at places like the Türkiye Art Festival and Inti Tattoo Expo. He headlines conventions like Expo Tattoo Medellín Lima Tattoo Convention and the World of Ink where he is treated like both a rock star and a diplomat for the legitimacy of tattooing as fine art.

Watching Anton work feels like watching someone straddle two mutually exclusive worlds. The mechanical precision of realism and the interpretive chaos of abstraction. He lives in that tension balancing perfectionism with imagination. And in doing so he quietly redefines what it means to make art. Not just for himself but for everyone who carries one of his pieces on their body forever.

Because in the end tattoos — like marriages like friendships like regret — are not about being perfect. They are about being permanent.