Hey, I’m Mat, and I wanted to share the story behind my tattoos. I got my first tattoo at 18—a small tribal design in black, blue, and green on my upper right arm. I drew it myself, and while it didn’t have any deep meaning, it was more of a phase I was going through at the time. My second tattoo followed shortly after, and again, I designed it. Being a proud Aussie, I thought it’d be cool to honor my roots with a boxing kangaroo surrounded by the Southern Cross constellation. Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned—probably due to the artist’s skill level at the time. I ended up getting it touched up in Bali, of all places, along with my third tattoo.
For the third, I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted, so I ended up with a pin-up girl on my left arm, thinking it could be the start of a sleeve. But over time, I didn’t really vibe with it. That led me to look into how to cover it up, and I eventually found an artist who could help. I put a lot of thought into what I wanted next and settled on a koi fish, after learning the meaning behind it. The koi represents a fish that swims upstream against the current of life’s challenges, and when it reaches the top, it transforms into a dragon—symbolizing success and transformation. It felt like the right fit for covering up that previous tattoo, so after three 3-hour sessions, I had the cover-up I wanted.
Next, during a trip back to Bali, I got two more tattoos—a dragon and a tiger—representing yin and yang, with a total of 9 hours spent on them. After that, I got a quote by Kurt Cobain: “I’d rather be hated for who I am, then loved for whom I am not.” Then came the laughing and crying masks with the phrase “Laugh now, cry later,” a reminder of the ups and downs in life. I followed that with tattoos of my two kids’ names on my forearms.
Finally, my most recent and possibly most meaningful tattoo: my son’s handprint from when he was little, on the left side of my chest, near my heart. He’s often the reason I keep going when things get tough, and this tattoo is a reminder that with time, they grow—and so do we.
