Jason D’Aquino knows about density. He packs so much into such little space and what is being packed are the heaviest of things; lessons on cruelty and wickedness and man’s unmatched capacity for evil. His work turns up in surprising places, matchbooks, antique ledger pages, the inside of a pocket watch. His pursuit of the right canvas is often as important as the drawings themselves, and his searches have led him down holes into which others would not crawl for their art.

As a child, D’Aquino was fascinated with the artwork of his mother and had a pencil in his hand since before he could walk. Though his preference for pencils has not changed, his art has grown smaller as he’s grown older. At first his work began to shrink as a matter of convenience, but it soon became a challenge for him, and lately D’Aquino has even taken to employing high-magnification goggles more traditionally suited for jewelers than sketch artists, to create his smallest works yet. D’Aquino is also a world famous tattoo artist and his work has been exhibited all over the United States and in places as far away as Hong Kong and Luxembourg.

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