PENNY BOY · GUEST SPOT · RICHMOND VA
Every October since 1988, the Richmond Tattoo & Arts Festival has pulled 175+ artists into a city that already breathes art — VCUarts studios, First Fridays, walls thick with murals. Yet the large-scale back is still wide-open ground here. When Penny Boy is in Virginia he takes a handful of full backs by application — work built for people who read a spine the way RVA reads a gallery wall.
A closed selection of Penny’s award-winning full backs — see them all & in motion, or view the art gallery.
Richmond knows craft — it has raised a generation of VCUarts painters and printmakers who can tell a big tattoo from a composed one. The full back is the most demanding canvas on the body, and Penny Boy (Massimiliano Pennella) tattoos nothing else. 100+ international awards and Best in Show sit behind every piece: bold neo-traditional, black-and-grey and colour backs, drawn to hold on the body for decades. When he's in Virginia the calendar is small and strictly by application — no fixed chair in town, and none needed.
Penny doesn't keep a studio in Richmond — he travels in for guest-spot windows, and a convention as established as the Richmond Tattoo & Arts Festival (running every October since 1988, 175+ artists) is exactly the kind of window he opens dates around. Don't take it from a flyer, though: apply, and if a Virginia window is on the calendar you'll be matched to it. Full and large-scale backs come first.
There is no price list. A full back is a large, multi-session project, so every quote is custom and issued only after your application is reviewed and approved — never before.
Yes. The back is the largest, most demanding canvas on the body, and it's the only thing he tattoos — full and half backs prioritised, in Richmond, across the East Coast and in Europe.