Who We Are

At True Canvas, we work without shoes. It is part of the relaxed atmosphere we want to create. The team also regularly spends time together outside of work, whether over a shared meal at the studio or in the evening with our guest artists. That personal exchange is a big part of what makes working here together so special.

Three studios under one roof, connected by one idea: to understand tattooing as art, not as mass produced work. Our resident artists work side by side with international guest artists – you can see who is at the studio and when in the calendar.

It all started in 2015, while Lisa was pregnant with their first child. Max was still working as an art teacher at the time and initially practised on pig skin. He had not even heard of fake skin back then. When Lisa became increasingly sensitive to smells during her pregnancy, Max had to switch to working on real skin pretty quickly.

For a while, Max worked in another studio. It soon became clear that this way of working was not something he wanted to do in the long term. He did not just want to tattoo. He wanted to build something of his own: a place where quality, development and a shared commitment to doing things well would come first.

Lisa brought a very different set of strengths to the idea. She grew up in a family with its own business and therefore had an early insight into the organisational and commercial side of running a company. While Max focused on developing his work as an artist, Lisa took care of the structure behind it.

In 2017, the idea started to become a concrete plan. While heavily pregnant, Lisa began looking for suitable premises. She found an empty hairdressing salon just 100 metres from the flat where she and Max would move with their two children in spring 2018.

The space was not even officially available on the market, so Lisa had to find her own way in. Through the company responsible for clearing the snow, she found out which property management company was responsible for the building. She called them, and it worked.

On 16 January 2018, Lisa and Max signed the lease for their first studio. At the time, it consisted of just two small rooms. That same night, their second son, Levi, was born.

True Canvas has grown steadily ever since. Those first two rooms gradually became three separate studio spaces, renovated, expanded and adapted over the years to suit the needs of the artists. What started as a personal idea has grown into an established tattoo studio in Vienna.

While Max is the more visible face of True Canvas as an artist and founder, Lisa takes care of much of what happens behind the scenes. She organises, structures and creates the framework that allows the artists to focus on their work. She deliberately stays in the background, making sure that the many things that need to happen behind the scenes simply work as they should for both clients and artists.

True Canvas was never built around one person alone. It grew from the combination of different strengths, ideas and perspectives. Today, a permanent team of resident artists works here alongside international guest artists, who regularly come to Vienna.