When people talk about tattoos, they usually mean a picture. Something that should look striking, tell a story, impress. Anastasiia does something else. She marks points where time stands still.
The Ukrainian artist living in Colorado works with thin lines—almost invisible unless you look closely. Her tattoos don’t shout. They whisper. A single word on a wrist. An outline on ribs. A line along a collarbone. It all looks almost accidental—like someone marked themselves and forgot to erase it. But it’s not accidental. It’s the shape a feeling took.
Ana doesn’t decorate bodies. She helps people leave on their skin what would otherwise dissolve. The birth of a child. A moment when everything became clear. A decision that changed the direction of life. The day you understood who you really are. “People don’t come for beauty,” she says. “They come to fix something in place. So it won’t drift away anymore.” And she fixes it. Not with a drawing, but with a mark. Something so small that only you can see it, but so precise that every time your eyes fall on that line—you return to where it all started.
One woman came after losing her brother. Wanted something about his resilience—the quality that defined him. Anastasiia drew a skeleton hand holding a dandelion. Death holding a flower that refuses to die. The woman couldn’t speak. At the end of the session, she hugged Ana and cried.
Anastasiia works at Terrapin Tattoo studio in Centennial, a Denver suburb. Within her first year of working in the U.S., she’s joined three professional associations—the Alliance of Professional Tattooists, Global Tattoo Association, and Tattoo Benefits Association of America. For a Ukrainian who started in Poland, it’s a path from apprentice to recognized master. She takes appointments only—Monday through Friday, three or four people a week. No walk-ins, no one off the street. Each meeting is planned in advance, sometimes a month out.
A Process That Begins With Conversation
Because her work doesn’t start with a needle. It starts with conversation. Long, sometimes uncomfortable. Ana asks questions people don’t expect to hear in a tattoo shop. Not “what do you want,” but “why are you here.” Not “what style,” but “what happened.”
Messages can go back and forth for weeks. A person sends an idea, she asks—what’s behind it. They explain. She digs deeper. And so on—until she gets to that exact image, word, line that captures everything.
A session can last an hour, can last five. It depends not on the size of the tattoo, but on how ready the person is. Sometimes you just need to sit down, breathe out, and start. Sometimes—go over everything once more right before the work begins.
Anastasiia turns people down if she feels a project isn’t hers. Bright colors, old school, something aggressive or decorative—that’s not it. Hands, fingers, intimate areas—also no. Not because it’s technically difficult. It’s just not what she does.
She works with people who already know why they came. Maybe they don’t know what it looks like, but they definitely know what’s inside. They have a story. A symbol. A phrase. The handwriting of someone who’s gone. A date. A moment.
Her work isn’t for Instagram. Everything’s too small there, too faint. In photos they’re barely visible. But on the body—they’re louder than any sleeve. It’s like someone took a marker and wrote on their arm what they mustn’t forget. Except forever.
Rituals of Connection
She sees a lot of matching tattoos. Friends, couples, siblings marking their bond. Identical elements or mirrored ones, or designs that complete each other. Not aesthetics. It’s a ritual. A way to say without saying: you’re part of me, I’m part of you.
Ana doesn’t call it therapy. Doesn’t use big words. Though she wrote a study about how personal symbols on skin help process traumatic experience. Not heal it, but process it—give it a form you can live with. People often say that after a session with her, something inside settles. Not because the pain left. But because it found its place. Became not a cloud, but a point on a map.
One girl who lost her grandfather asked for a dragonfly. Anastasiia wove his initials into the wing pattern—hidden in the natural lines, invisible unless you know where to look. “You’re always here,” the tattoo says. “Just different now.” That’s what Ana does. She translates the internal to the external. Not to show everyone. To not lose it yourself.
The Absence of Style
Her style is the absence of style. No signature techniques, no repeating motifs. Each piece looks like someone else made it. Because each one is for a specific person, for their story. One person needs a vertical line. Another—a circle. A third—a fox, their totem animal, the thing that lives between instinct and thought.
From first message to session usually takes two to three weeks. It’s not a delay. It’s time to think it through. To feel it. To understand what exactly should remain on the skin. Anastasiia doesn’t rush. She knows: if you hurry—it’ll come out pretty, but empty.
She gets this depth because she’s been her own client. Three small words on her body: Trust. Allow. Be Grateful. She got them working through anxiety and the need to control everything. Each word had weight. The tattoo became an anchor—a reminder she doesn’t need to fight the current.
Anastasiia is convinced: memory should have a form. Not necessarily complex. But precise. One where when you look—you immediately return to where it happened.
She doesn’t do decorative tattoos. Doesn’t do “just pretty.” If someone comes with a request for “something stylish”—she says no. “That’s not mine. I work with what can’t be postponed.”
A Living Chronicle
She has a client she’s done three pieces for over two years. The first—after a divorce. A thin line on the shoulder that breaks off. The second—six months later when the woman moved to another city. A small outline on her ankle—like a footprint. The third—recently, when she met someone new. An unclosed circle on her wrist. “I didn’t plan to get tattoos,” the woman says. “But every time something changed, I understood: I need to fix this. Otherwise it’ll dissolve, like it never happened.” That’s what Ana is for. So important things don’t dissolve.
She was once a judge at international beauty competitions, but returned to tattoos. Because there, on stage, it’s all about the external. And here—it’s about what remains when no one’s watching. Now she’s working on an educational project for artists who want to work not just with skin, but with stories.
Her work isn’t art in the usual sense. It’s a way to hold a moment. Turn a feeling into a line, an event—into an outline, a decision—into a point. When the body remembers—it doesn’t remember abstractly. It remembers specifically: right here, like this, this thing. And Ana’s tattoo isn’t a picture over memory. It’s the memory itself that found a place on skin.
A thin line. One word. A small mark. Everything you need to not forget who you are and where you came from.
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