When Clare Miles went looking for information on the history of female tattoo artists in Australia, she was amazed to find nothing documented.
"So I thought, 'Right. I'll do this myself'," she said. Painted Ladies: The History of Female Tattoo Artists in Australia was finished three years later.
A high-school art teacher who lives by the motto "live life, breathe art", Ms Miles wanted to know about the women who blazed the trail she walks as a tattoo artist, a career she came to "fairly late", in her early 30s, six years ago.
"I wanted to give something back to the tattoo community and I just found it astonishing that there was nothing already," she said.
"There is a lot of information on American female artists, but I couldn't find anything on Australian female artists. Not at the State Library archives, or anywhere. So I went looking."
What she found was a rich history of pioneering women who were often overshadowed or sentenced to obscurity by their male counterparts.
"Women have been tattooing in Australia forever. For as long as men have been," Ms Miles said.
"It was just never as widely known. I think a lot of it was because they weren't deemed as relevant as men – a lot of the men had their names on the studio. It was their business and the women were never popularised as being successful artists. A lot of them were wives or girlfriends or the daughters of the male artists and they just weren't promoted. People weren't aware of them unless they sought them out or stumbled across them."
Time, feminism and social media have each played a role in changing attitudes towards the painted ladies who came before Ms Miles and her fellow women artists.
But Ms Miles believes the differences between how men and women approach the craft have also played a part.
"I think women have a gentler touch," she said.
"I think they have more of a sympathetic understanding of why somebody might want to get tattooed, especially if there is something personal, or it is a cover-up for necessity, like a scar cover-up for a C-section – I think women have a bit more empathy," she said.
"They tend to have more time to put into a design for someone as well."
But it's not all tattooed roses and butterflies. The same complaints that had afflicted working women the world over also had stained the tattoo industry and, in some cases, still did, Ms Miles said.
"Now that women have shown themselves to be successful, well-accomplished tattoo artists in their own right, it has got better," she said.
"But it is still around."
But inclusiveness helps, as does supporting other women artists and mentoring the next generation. Ms Miles does both at her Brisbane tattoo studio, The Painted Lady.
But she believes it is just as important to acknowledge the past and the present, which is why she hopes her book will reach artists and arts devotees of all ages and both genders.
"It's for everyone," she said.
