I wanted to talk to you more.

Friday May 1st, 2026.

It wasn’t the last thing he said to me, but it was one of the last few sentences. Greg stood up, family telling him it was time to go and he, reluctantly yet understandingly, listened. He grabbed my hand, looked me in the face and said “I wanted to talk to you more.”

I walked out into the alley with everyone. Family, friends, old guys I’m certain he didn’t remember very well at all, we walked out together. Someone, probably his daughter, Jessica, had pulled a car around so Greg didn’t have to walk too far and there we said goodbyes, I waved through the car window and they headed north. Maybe Peggy, his wife, got the car. It was October, last year, in Denver, it should have been chilly by that point but winter isn’t the same anymore. I flew to Colorado to be part of the Keep The Fire art show, a Skibo tattoo family group art show. Greg Skibo, the man who taught me to tattoo, was the star of the show. Everyone else in the show was either someone Greg had taught or had worked for Greg for a long time. Also people who have learned tattooing from someone Greg taught. I was honored when I was asked to send a piece in, I’ve been away a while but I am proudly part of this family, no way am I missing this. So I flew in for it. Got a friend to pick me up from DIA, drive me around and drop me back at DIA. 

The caliber of art in that show was high as hell. Greg’s work is unmistakable. His paintings are loose yet refined. Intentional and flowing, it isn’t ‘perfect’, he isn’t aiming for that, he’s doing things that feel alive. There was a center piece of dragon paintings, four of them, done by Greg, Chris, Nik and Than, all distinct and different, all beautiful, but you look at them and you see how Greg’s art influenced them all. You looked at every piece in that room and you can see that both on purpose and subconsciously, mine maybe more than most, and we’re all clearly pulling from ideas Greg had first. 

My friend, who does not tattoo but is an immensely talented artist, walked around the room and said you could see it was a family. 

Greg took me on as an apprentice when I was a couple months past my 18th birthday. I was in high school when I took my portfolio in to show him. I’ve been working since I was 12, I was a dishwasher by 13, a line cook at a steak house by 15 and more or less kitchen manager at 17. I was a breakfast cook essentially every Saturday and Sunday through my senior year of high school and I didn’t want to go to college. I just wanted to draw and play bass. I hoped that if I got a tattoo apprenticeship my family would get off my back about going to college. I had applied to art schools and had that as my backup plan. I turned down a scholarship to UNC (Northern Colorado, not Carolina) because I didn’t want to go to college. 

One day after school, my dad was in the state, he picked me up and drove me down to Greg’s Greeley shop. I had gotten a tattoo the week before and asked a million questions to Jon, who did that first tattoo on my right bicep, but Greg wasn’t in Greeley that day, I think he was in Cheyenne whatever day of the week that was. But the next week my dad was in town for my graduation, he had been tattooed in Greg’s shop many times (mostly by Nik, if I remember correctly) and if you rode a Harley in northern Colorado at that time, you had met my dad at some point. So we walk into the Greeley shop, Greg recognizes my dad and they say hello, exchange a handshake, Greg is over six feet tall, dad is closer to five foot than six. Greg asks dad what’s going on and dad does little more than point at me and walks away. 

I don’t really remember too much of that first conversation. I had the portfolio I had used applying to art colleges with me and Greg looked through it, gave honest and fair assessments and advice. We talked art. I told him I just wanted to draw, I was really interested in tattoos for as long as I could remember. I had ordered a couple tattoo machines from Big Joe Kaplan in Mt Vernon, New York from an ad in the back of Outlaw Biker magazine. Or maybe Tattoo Savage magazine. Or just Tattoo Magazine. Maybe even Easy Rider. They pretty much all had ads for machines from Big Joe and Huck-Spaulding and I’m sure a couple others. Kaplan was just cheaper, so that’s what I bought. 

I made it clear that I had done like ten tattoos in my mom’s basement and I understood that I didn’t know shit. I owned equipment, cheap equipment, but I needed an apprenticeship. The only thing I knew for sure about doing a tattoo was that I didn’t know how to do a tattoo. 

I don’t think I ever brought up making money when Greg and I first talked, I think I just jabbered on about wanting to just make art. Greg was incredibly generous with his time, we talked for almost forty minutes and then he told me “I’m probably not going to hire you. But I am going to think about it and I’ll call you to tell you ‘no’.”     

And then I got a ride to my graduation rehearsal, where I was late and the people I was walking with were not happy with me about that. But there was a chance I was getting an apprenticeship, what the fuck do I care about the order we walk in. 

Soon after, Greg calls me. Tells me that I am getting that chance, he is willing to take me on as an apprentice. There is no money until I make money. There is lots of work, there are strict rules, nothing will be handed to me and nothing will be easy. I jumped at the chance. No hesitation. He said “If you want to learn how to tattoo, be here tomorrow, if not, have a nice life and keep getting tattoos.” That was in late June. Greg always said July and I’m not going to argue it. 

I don’t think I said this to many people but I was intimidated by Greg for much longer than you might think. He was kind, he was humble, he was nice, he was funny and he was an incredible teacher. Greg was never anything but good to me but I was an insecure kid and when I first met him he was the best tattoo artist in the area by far, he owned three shops and tattooed five or six days a week. He did everything that walked in the door without judgement. He also had people traveling to get tattooed by him. Driving hours. Flying in for a weekend. Riding a motorcycle down from a different state. I was at the shop for a couple weeks, I was learning about the famous tattooers of the era and the previous ones and I started to notice things, framed pictures from those famous tattooers signed to “my good friend,Greg”. Magazine spreads of the Skibo’s shops. Artist badges from conventions and expos all over, going back to the seventies.

Greg wasn’t just the best guy in the area, Greg was bigger than that. A while after that, we’re at a convention, we’re not working it, we’re just there and the most known artists in the room are coming up to Greg to say hi. Not they are saying hi to Greg as we walk by, they are coming up to Greg to say hello. Lyle Tuttle stopped what he was doing to come say hey to Greg. Just shit like that the whole time.  

I see Greg’s name and pictures in things about the history of tattooing in the country. I see his name as a board member or president of national organizations dedicated to tattooing. He would never just brag that he was important to tattooing. But he was actually important to tattooing. Even after I was tattooing daily, even after Greg had made it clear I was part of the family, I was intimidated. I just wanted to do right by him. 

I ended up doing a year in art college at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. It was…not for me. I was too interested in tattooing, even though Greg encouraged me to continue on and finish an illustration degree, I didn’t want to go back for a second year. We talked one day and I expressed what I thought I was not being taught in class, it was a matter of real world color usage, not just theory, I needed to see it. And not a single instructor at RMCAD was teaching me what I was asking to be taught. Greg pulled three broken colored pencil and a black ballpoint pen out of a drinking glass full of pens and pencils and, in 15 minutes, he showed me exactly what I was asking accredited college professors to teach me. And then he went to the back of the shop and played a game of pinball. 

When I asked Greg if he would want to do a Hunter Thompson GONZO dagger tattoo on me, he pulled a Thompson book out of his bag. He had just happened to be reading it. When I asked him to do my Jimi Hendrix portrait he told me about seeing Hendrix live. Greg and I had incredibly different tastes and incredibly different inspirations, but the overlap of things we loved was undeniable.  

I worked for Greg for less than five years. He owned three shops the entire time I worked for him and the only negative I can say about my apprenticeship is I wish I had gotten to work with him more. But he was tattooing full time and running multiple businesses. I left when Jon bought the Greeley shop. Greg told me I always had a home tattooing for him if I wanted. One time I cracked a joke that when Jon bought the Greeley shop I was included in the price and Greg did not find that funny and made it very clear that he told Jon I got to go wherever I wanted. I had clients in Greeley, I had a place in Greeley. I didn’t want to commute, so I didn’t go to one of Greg’s other shops. 

I visited him pretty often, I would just go hang out the days he tattooed in Ft Collins and bullshit with him. I got tattooed by him pretty consistently for the next decade. He did my dragon sleeve, the back of my head, the big banner that fills my upper chest, my Hendrix portrait. When I had been tattooing for a decade I asked him to put a tattoo machine on my neck, I told him I thought I had earned it at ten years in. He told me I had earned it long before that. About a decade after that he used the same linework to put a machine on Than. I am still really touched that he kept the drawing he did for my neck tattoo. I was one of the handful invited to his surprise party for 40 years of tattooing.  

Greg was one of the first people I told that I was moving out of Colorado. He and Peggy were in the office of the Front Range shop on North College Ave in Fort Collins, they both said they were going to miss me and they both said I was going to be fine. I didn’t see Greg as much as I would have liked, I didn’t call him like I should have. He retired. Moved to the east coast and back. We traded a couple emails. I took him to breakfast when I was in town. I dropped in to see him and bought some paintings from him at Denver City Tattoo Club when they did a garage sale of tattoo stuff. Greg saw me buy a skull and just said “yeah, that makes sense.”

So, eventually, the Skibo family art show is going to happen and I fly back for it. I don’t think anyone really expected that but I wasn’t going to miss it. Greg hadn’t been well. I didn’t know that until I got there. Others said he might not even be coming to the art show. And then I turned around and Peggy was there, hugging me. Greg was there and we looked at the show together before people really came in. Greg told me that he wanted to talk to me, but a lot of old guys were showing up almost like they were paying their respects to him. I stayed out of the way, because, frankly, that is what I do. And more than once Greg made sure I wasn’t leaving because he wanted to catch up. I had helped open Cosmic Noise since he and I really last talked. There were people trying to talk to him all day, my mom included. More than once he told me not to leave and I said I was there all day.

Greg was interviewed at the art show. I was standing off camera, close though. I am not going to recount everything he said, but the guy interviewing him asked about the tattooers Greg had taught while motioning to the biggest displays of the art show, the centerpiece of dragons. And Greg brought me up in the conversation. He made sure I wasn’t getting left out. And he said some things, some incredibly kind and powerful things about the people that carry on his legacy, and he made sure that I heard him say it. 

It almost brought me to tears, I can admit that. I wasn’t expecting it, I wasn’t asking for it, I didn’t see it coming, but the guy who gave me this career, the man who taught me, inspired me and mentored me in so many ways, made sure I heard what he had to say.  

But, as things go, time ran out.  

Peggy and Jessica told Greg he was going home. He told me he wasn’t happy about it and that's when he told me “I wanted to talk to you more.”.

Same, Greg, same. I think I have felt that way for most of the twenty seven years since I met you. 

Greg was a hero to me. A teacher and a real mentor. Greg was not just my friend, he was family. It is fucking me up that he is gone now. It will for a while. But I am going to keep on keeping on, and I am going to go tattoo tomorrow and try to do better than I did today. I am going to try and keep pushing myself as an artist and I am going to try to do the same to others. I’m part of a family, not the end of it. I can help keep the fire going.

I wish the Skibo family, both close and extended, peace.