Sonya Feola De La Cruz

Sonya and I did our shoot at local tapas and wine lounge La Diosa. I thought it would be the perfect place to compliment her outfit and extraordinary leg piece. Sonya has been working as a tattoo artist for the past 8 years, but an artist for as long as she can remember. She originally started creating art with just a mechanical pencil and paper. "It's therapeutic. The repetitive motion that comes with shading and sketching with one singular color."

“I can draw you anything. I was homeschooled during middle school and both of my parents would draw. That’s when I got really good at drawing…and math.” Sonya went to school at Texas Tech for Civil Engineering but later switched over to tattooing full-time.

“I don’t regret going to school. I liked my classes. I like math, I’m good at it. But at some point you have to ask yourself, ‘What would make my soul feel whole?’”

“There’s only really two avenues to go towards with my craft, painting or tattoos, and I didn’t like painting at the time. I thought it would be cool to be really good at tattooing.”

“I was actually working, going to school, and trying to learn the art of tattooing all at once. My family was also really hesitant about this choice…I was hesitant about the choice. But I persevered. I’m glad it happened that way. The way things happened revealed to me that it was something I really cared about.”

We bonded over the discussion of inspiration, discovering we both have an affinity for being a part of vulnerable moments in human connections. She cites Van Gogh as one of her earlier inspirations.

“Van Gogh was fully capable of doing extreme realism. But he could let go of all that and sink into the emotions."

"I think that’s courageous- to let the feelings take control, to give into insanity. That’s a scary thing for people to do, to let the art completely take over…to self-implode. Do I want to do that? Do I want to implode?” She laughs, “It might make my art really good.”

I questioned her about her process on the large pieces she does on her clients, “You have to make it flow with the body. So you want to go around the butt, to the thigh, downwards, enhancing it. You want to enhance the body, not just make it a sticker that just floats there.”

“The Fibonacci Sequence is found on so many different parts of the body. You can’t just stamp a tattoo on there. It has to move with the body, without restricting the natural energy. You always want to follow an S-curve. I don’t like bands, bands cut off the flow of energy.”

Sonya revealed to me that she takes a limited amount of clients, for a good reason. She believes the process intertwines the souls of the artist and the client, something that shouldn’t be taken lightly. Before she was tattooing, she was reading on Hinduism and Taoism, citing psychiatrist Carl Jung and writer Alan Watts as major influences in her belief system.

“When you’re inflicting pain on people, it’s almost like truth serum. You’re looking into their soul in a way. It’s a delicate, divine period of time. It can get overwhelming, you start absorbing all the stories. It’s a spiritual bond between two beings that you don’t want to take for granted.”

IG: @sonyafeolatattoos