Black dotwork lotus mandala tattoo centred on a woman's upper back, with a line of dots above and below.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black lotus mandala tattoo on upper back

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman with long hair down shows her bare back, with one hand raised to her neck. A symmetrical black lotus mandala sits centrally on the upper back, with layered petals, inner geometric patterns and a dotted fill. A vertical line of dots runs above and below the motif, and the soft, warm-toned background keeps the black linework in focus.

Dotwork Botanical Back Lotus Mandala Dot Flower Geometric pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Edna Pryce had been working on the Lotus Ballroom's ceiling for eleven weeks before the owner noticed she was not painting rosettes at all. She was drawing petals in Indian ink, one ring at a time, with a brass compass that had been her father's and a pot she bought from the chemist on Harbour Street. Every morning the band's sound man climbed the ladder to check the wiring, and every morning he asked what the pattern was for.

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"It's a lotus," she said, "like the ones painted on temple walls. You start at the middle and work outwards, and every ring has to match the one opposite or the whole thing sits wrong." Her husband Walter had danced in this hall on their first Saturday, in 1948, with a girl who later married a fishmonger. Edna had never asked him about that girl. She had only asked him to dance with her under the medallion until the band packed up at midnight, and he had.

The dots came last. She marked them down the centre line above and below the medallion, following where the old chandelier had hung before it was taken down for scrap in the war. When she finished, the sound man climbed up to look and said it was perfectly balanced, that a person standing at the lower dot could look straight up and see the upper one sitting exactly over their head.

That evening, after the last dancers had gone and the chairs were stacked, Edna climbed the ladder herself. She found the lower dot on the floor, a faint black speck in the varnish where she had tested the ink, and she stepped onto it. Then she tipped her head back and looked up through the petals to the matching dot above, and for one minute the whole lotus opened over her like something finally finished.