Today we’d like to introduce you to Tyrell Davis.
Tyrell, before we jump into specific questions about your work, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I grew up an artist, always drawing what I have seen on tv, or outside. I’d even look up at the stars at night, drawing constellations that my mind could see and creating my own pictures from them. Then, I got older. I misled myself down unforgiving paths for 2 years after I turned 18 years old in 2015. I dropped out of college after one semester as a freshman and chose to live the “grown life”, working and paying bills for myself. In being out in the world on my own, I quickly learned that “this was the hardest thing I would ever experienced in my life”. Little did I know, this was just the beginning.
I continued on my journey, taking turns that I best seen fit. Not knowing that I was losing my way and myself at every step. I wound up homeless at the age of 18 in the winter. Pride captivated me and no one could know that I was in the world with nothing to my name but a toothbrush, duffel bag with a few sets of clothes and 2 pairs of shoes. I luckily got myself out of the situation after 2 days, I found a friend who let me stay with their family until I was back on my feet. I found a job as a server waiting tables and began saving money fast and in my mind at the time, I was back doing good for myself. I later moved out of that friend’s house and into another friend’s house whom I met at work.
In these next few months, I would be taken further away from myself than I had ever been in my life. I began selling and consuming drugs and hard alcohol every day. I looked in the mirror at myself every morning, skin and bones from the abundance of harmful consumption and the lack of pure necessities such as food and water. I would wonder “why am I still alive?” when I didn’t want to be. This seemed like where I’d be my entire life as days felt like weeks and weeks felt like months. Later I found myself in Downtown Dallas. Booked and processed as a criminal in ‘Lew Sterrett Justice Center’ for possession of an illegal substance. With no contact to the outside world for 3 of the 5 days I was in there, I had time to think about the wrong I had been doing. But with the same mindset, “I was caught because I was just born of bad luck.”
After my time in jail, I moved back in with my mother who still accepted me after all that I put her and myself through. I began down the same path of drugs and alcohol, only this time “more secretively” and not as “out of control.” This was my life and I had to make the best of it how I saw fit. I worked two jobs to show income so that I might be able to keep up with the lifestyle I was living as well.
It was a month before my 19th Birthday, October 7th, at 2:00 am when my life and mindset would be changed forever. “He just shot me, he just shot me” I spoke softly as I drove off from the scene of the shooting. My entire life flashing before my eyes as I took low and slow breaths, knowing that the next exhale would be my last. I had been in a road rage incident with a man that didn’t care about his life and surely not mine as I had little care myself. Two wrongs will never mix and end smoothly. I was then rushed to a medical center in Plano, by an EMT with his knowledge of the hospital’s really good trauma center, from the North Dallas area of Richardsons’ ‘Berkner High school’. I was immediately put under on the operation room table. I woke up 7 hours later after surgery with 40 staples lining vertically up the middle of my stomach, a bullet hole in my back and chest tube sticking out the side of my ribs. The doctor explained to me that I had been lucky. The 9mm bullet took a path from the barrel of the gun 2 feet away through my back, ricocheting off a rib, grazing my lung and stopping in my abdomen, where it remains to this day. I wasn’t lucky, I was blessed. God did love me and I know that everything I had been through was just one big test. I wanted to live again, I had more to offer the world, I had a purpose and God would not let me leave this earth until I had fulfilled his will and touched all the lives that I am supposed to. Because we aren’t here going through life for ourselves, but for those around us.
It is 2017. I hadn’t picked up a pencil to draw in over a year at this point. My family knew me as an artist and encouraged me to try becoming a tattoo artist. It was a rough start in learning how to tattoo and just getting back into art itself. I began to paint and draw like I never had before, with only self-taught lessons and my eyes and hands led by God. I surprised myself every day and still do with the art and tattoos that I have produced in such little time. I had found my purpose again and how much it meant to me. I would go on to live an honest life with my art/ tattooing and working for a moving company that I work at to this day. The girl I was in a relationship with at this time had a miscarriage with our child. Both of us devastated at the fact and with hard times as a couple. I questioned God, but only for a moment, of his plans for us not to have the child and be in the predicament we were in. But after me and her relationship had fallen through, I re-realized that he truly does do everything for a reason. We are to learn and grow strong through his tough lessons. If life was easy and comfortable, we would all be infants of the mind. In 2018, I truly longed for finding God. As easily as I began the search, I found him and began having a relationship with him. I sought narcotics anonymous classes and truly turned my life around with probation from jail and just wanting everything God had in store for me.
Today, at the age of 22, I am able to say that in finding myself, I have been a tattoo artist for 3 years. I have impacted my life in creating an independent artist business for myself. But more importantly, I’ve impacted the lives of many others through my art and good spirit as I am not only with myself again but with God. I am in a relationship with a young woman whom I wish to marry in the very near future. Her name is Jariell Brown and she presently carries our baby girl ‘Aria Noelle Davis’ who will be due December 10th, 2019, exactly one year from the day Jariell and I became an official couple. When I met Jariell, my mentality to be more for more than just myself sprung forward drastically. In knowing who she was, I had to continue to elevate myself mentally, rapidly. I am now back in school, enrolled to get my associates degree in Graphic Design. With plans to continue further education after that for more credentials in becoming more independent. Working for the family-owned moving company today, I have aspirations to gain co-ownership or full ownership of that business in the next couple of years. I also plan to have my own art studio in which I would exercise all my art abilities as an independent artist of many trades. This life and it’s blessings will not stop until God is ready for them too. So, neither will I. “This is just the beginning.”
Has it been a smooth road?
Self-inflicted struggles.
Being homeless.
Going to jail.
Being shot in the back.
Having to have and exploratory laparotomy.
Facing a miscarriage.
Beating my former self.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
I am an independent artist. I do commission artwork whether it’s drawings, paintings or tattoos. I will soon be a graphic designer as well. I specialize specific in drawing portraits using charcoal and or graphite pencil and some color pencil. I’m known for drawing, painting and doing tattoos. I am most proud of the way my clients feel when I have presented their finalized piece to them with all their ideas combined with my creativity. To please others beyond their own expectations is what I strive for and to me that makes all the difference. Care for others as you care for yourself.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
I would definitely say, that the Dallas/ Fort Worth metroplex is the place for entrepreneurs and a business like mine. There are so many resources to become anything you desire to be in life. Whether you stay here the rest of your life or not, this can and will be a great launching pad to the journey you seek.
Pricing:
- 11×14 inch portrait drawing starts off at $250
- All paintings 20×20 inches or bigger start off at $250
- Tattoo prices are based on size and detail with a minimum of $75
Contact Info:
- Phone: (214)298-4405
- Email: dequantydavis@icloud.com
- Instagram: Truetys_art.ink
- Facebook: Tyrell Davis
- Twitter: TrueTysArt
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