Sydney draws creative cookies and bright sparks from all over Australia and the world. It’s a city that isn’t afraid to reinvent itself. And it’s no surprise then, that it’s home to some truly inspired innovators: the kind of people who twist tradition with imagination and a little left field thinking to create magic – whether in a sourdough loaf or a scented candle. From the florist, baker to the candlestick-maker, we meet some of Sydney’s brave new artisans.

Jimmy Memento is nothing if not enigmatic. Tattooer. Mystic. Traveller reads his website. Blackworker says his Instagram feed (he works in black ink only). Intriguing as he may be, one thing’s clear: Jimmy Memento is a one-off.

Jimmy has created his own world around his talent for tattooing. His own folklore can be read in his designs – and not least on his own body; a living canvas decorated head to toe with intricate illustrations of mandalas, script, serpents, you name it.

And whatever request a customer comes up with – a palm tree or a pastry piping bag; a tarot card or a tiger – Jimmy executes it with the stylistic flair of a brilliant artist and the confident line of a highly skilled draughtsman. He works best when given free rein, he says, and inspiration often comes from within.

“I wait until I hit an all time low and don’t desire to please anyone. My most successful artworks have only ever been intended to serve my personal aesthetic pleasure and no one else’s. They just channel through me, through a desire to create them. I always see them perfectly in my mind first then print them out through my fingers I suppose.”

But how did Jimmy become such a distinctive and unconventional tattoo artist? By going right back to the start, it turns out, as he reflects on the vast and broad spectrum of traditional tattooing. For example there was “Ötzi the iceman”, he says, who “had a series of line tattoos still embedded in his skin when he was discovered frozen for over 5,000 years.”

There’s a tradition of tattooing among tribes of Borneo and Russian prisons, among American, Chicano, Japanese and Māori people. “This list goes on,” says Jimmy, “and everyone believes their culture has the one form of traditional tattooing. All of which is written in their own manmade language, much like religion.”

Considering this, “I would say my tattooing is very traditionally influenced,” he continues. “I also have a lithographic printing background through which I developed a liking for metal plate etchings of print artists such as Hans Holbein. He was famous for publishing The Dance of Death in 1538. I guess I’m just doing things that are so old, they’re new again, right?”

Jimmy’s personal relationship with tattooing extends right back to infancy, but he came to it as a vocation a little later. “I would have to say I just ended up here through a series of both fortunate and very unfortunate events,” he says.

“My great, great grandfather was heavily tattooed, [as were] all the other men down the line until I was born. The rest is just a series of trying other careers and suffering unfortunate consequences to find that tattooing was my soul mate.”

And while perhaps his love for tattooing was inherited, his unique sensibility no doubt comes from his worldview. “I have an amazing skill for reckless abandonment of society’s pre-programmed notions of expectations”, he says. “I don’t get the world, but I do get my art, and that’s all this alchemistic hermit boy needs.”

True to his word, he’s created his own reality in his four-level old church hall conversion in Glebe. It’s his home, but perhaps more than that a creative space: for making jewellery and art, for recording music and for video production. And soon, when the time is right, he will open his very own studio, Tatouges Noir.

“I am starting something very exciting that hasn’t been done before,” he reveals to us: “a contemporary private studio, dark lit with backlighting, hypnotising music, aroma oils, laser projections on the ceiling for client meditation.” He’s also developing a new, relaxing tattooing technique and is confident it’ll make its mark on the industry.

But anyone keen to give it a go might be in for a long wait: “It will only be accessible after an interview process as I have over 1,000 clients in Sydney and will only be serving exclusively a handful of well-mannered, deserving clients.” Badly behaved with uninspired ideas? Suffice to say you need not apply.

Read: 

The new artisans part 1: Doctor Lisa Cooper

The new artisans part 2: Elise Pioch Blazac

The new artisans part 3: William Petersen