Kateryna: Surreal Tattoos and Black and Grey at True Canvas
Kateryna tattoos surreal designs in black and grey under the name Black Flora. A photograph, a memory or a story becomes a design that belongs to one person only.
For Kateryna, the artist behind Black Flora, a tattoo begins with something personal. A photograph, a memory, a botanical detail or a place someone carries with them can become the starting point for a custom design.
As a resident artist at True Canvas in Vienna's 4th district, Wieden, she works in fine line, dotwork and micro realism. Her approach brings together careful composition, delicate detail and an attentive relationship with the person behind each tattoo.
Where your feelings become art
This phrase sits at the center of Black Flora. It reflects Kateryna's interest in creating work that holds meaning for its wearer, whether through a recognizable image or a more subtle visual connection.
Clients do not need to arrive with a finished design. Some bring photographs and clear references, others bring a story or a feeling they have not yet found an image for. Kateryna listens, asks questions and explores how those ideas might take shape on skin.
She particularly enjoys developing custom surreal tattoos from clients' ideas, using micro realism to give imagined scenes and metaphorical subjects a tangible form. The client's story guides the concept. Her role is to translate it into a composition with its own visual character.
A change of direction
In 2020, Kateryna left a career in sales within the IT industry to pursue a more personal creative path. She began learning in Kyiv through private, one-on-one lessons with a tattoo studio owner and artist, developing her practice through focused guidance.
That transition became the beginning of work that reflected her own vision: an artistic practice grounded in precision, emotional connection and care. After living and working in Warsaw for three years, she moved to Vienna and joined True Canvas as a resident tattoo artist in February 2026.
From drawing to skin
Alongside tattooing, Kateryna creates graphic art and dotwork illustrations. Her drawings explore light, texture and form through small, carefully placed marks, an attention to detail that also informs her tattoo work.
Her love of flowers inspired the name Black Flora. Botanical designs sit alongside small illustrative subjects and softly shaded black and grey pieces in her portfolio. She is particularly drawn to surreal compositions, metaphors and hidden meanings, bringing familiar subjects together in unexpected ways.
Each design is considered in relation to its size, placement and the body it will become part of. The aim is to find a composition that feels personal and sits naturally on the wearer.
Personal ideas, surreal compositions
Metamorphosis: seeing transformation
For a client seeking a symbol of personal transformation, Kateryna created a composition in which a caterpillar faces an oval mirror and a butterfly appears within it. The client's idea of metamorphosis became the foundation for a surreal scene, connecting two stages of life through reflection.
Micro realism gives the imagined encounter its physical detail: the caterpillar's form, the butterfly's patterned wings and the softly shaded mirror frame. These elements turn an abstract theme into an intimate visual story, made specifically for its wearer.
A whale and a human heart
Another custom project brings together a whale and an anatomical human heart, connected by a fine red thread. Developed from a story meaningful to the client, the design combines subjects that would not ordinarily share a scene.
Realistic textures and soft black and grey shading give both forms depth, while the red thread creates a deliberate connection between them. The composition expresses the client's idea through metaphor, allowing its deeper meaning to remain personal.
Imagination and collaboration
A pepper-shaped lighter explores a more playful side of Kateryna's surreal work, combining an organic form with an unexpected function. A solar system composition shows her interest in miniature realistic detail, with individual planetary textures arranged along the forearm.
Her original wannado designs also leave room for a client's contribution. A patterned vintage teacup began as one of these concepts and was personalized with the client's suggestion to add sakura petals to the spilling tea. The result preserves the original design's character while incorporating an idea brought by its wearer.
A memory of Vienna
One custom project began with a client's wish to take a reminder of Vienna home with them. Inspired by Hundertwasser's architecture, Kateryna created a black and grey tattoo of an arched window.
The piece offers another glimpse of her approach: a place and a personal memory translated into a specific visual detail, then developed into a tattoo for that client.
Working with Kateryna at True Canvas
Black Flora is Kateryna's own artistic brand. Her workplace in Vienna is True Canvas on Weyringergasse in the 4th district, where she shares a cozy creative space with the team as a resident artist, a five minute walk from Belvedere Palace.
If this will be your first tattoo, the whole process is covered on our page about your first tattoo. For the other styles we work in, see our overview of tattoo styles.
You'll find more of her work on Instagram and on her own site, Black Flora. For an overview of the whole team, see our artists, and international guest artists come to Vienna regularly.
Send it all through our inquiry form.