Black and grey Celtic knotwork sleeves cover both arms, with a circular tree of life design on the upper back, in a black and white photo of a shirtless man with raised arms.

Celtic knotwork sleeves and tree of life back piece

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A man seen from behind, arms raised and gripping a bar, with interlaced Celtic knotwork covering both arms and a large circular tree of life design across the upper back. The linework is fine and dense, with stippled dotwork shading that gives the knots depth and texture. The photo is monochrome and set against dark foliage outdoors, with the tattoos forming the clear focus of the frame.

Blackwork Dotwork Upper arm Forearm Back Shoulder Celtic knot Knotwork Tree of life Serpent Interlace Sleeve Back piece Tree

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomasz,

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The lift has been broken since Tuesday, so I have been walking the fourteen floors with the shopping and thinking about your drawing. You remember the one, the tree with roots like a braid and the serpents chasing their own tails round the trunk. Mrs Okonedo on the eleventh landing has pinned a photocopy of it above her doorbell. She says the council painted over the mural in the stairwell last spring, and she wants it back.

I went down to the bins yesterday to look. Under the grey emulsion there is still a shape, a circle with knots around the rim, where the paint has worn thin by the handrail. Somebody has scratched a small tree into the plaster beside it, with two sets of initials and a date from 1994. I stood there with a bag of potatoes for a long time. The boys from the ground floor came through on their bikes and asked what I was staring at. I said a tree, and they laughed and went on.

Your father always said a knot is only a line that refuses to end. I thought about that on the stairs, climbing past the windows where the trees below look like a dark carpet, and I decided he was right about most things except the lift.

Enclosed is a photograph Mrs Okonedo took on her phone. Tell me if the serpents in it are the ones you drew, or whether you have improved them in Leeds, where there is nothing to do but draw.

Love, Irena