The tattoo artist who etched a Day of the Dead "sugar skull" on Chris Brown's neck has spoken for the first time about the controversy his ink caused earlier this week.
Media outlets scrutinising photographs of the new skin art suggested it resembled the photo of Rihanna's beaten face following her 2009 Grammy Awards eve fight that ended her romance with Brown - and led to assault charges for the Kiss Kiss singer.
Brown was quick to deny the new tattoo had anything to do with his ex, revealing it was a copy of a M.A.C. Cosmetic design he spotted in a magazine piece about the sombre Mexican festival, where families remember their late relatives, feast and dress up as skeletons and the undead.
And now the tattoo artist behind Brown's new ink has lashed out at the media for suggesting he would make light of domestic violence and agree to etch the face of a battered woman on a client's skin.
Peter Koskela tells E! News, "It was really a blow to me to think that people would think so little of a person that I would actually put a picture of a beaten woman on his neck. That was crazy to me, that he would come to me and say, 'Hey, I want Rihanna's face on me.'
"I would never promote any kind of domestic violence like that. Even if he asked me to do it, I would have bounced (left) right there. I don't do racist tattoos, I don't do gang-related tattoos and I don't do anything hurtful. That is just the motto I live by. The other tattoo artists might, but I just don't."
And Koskela is urging fans to reserve judgment on the new tattoo until it heals properly and looks exactly like the image Brown brought to him: "People thought it was a beat-up face, but it takes two weeks to heal because the neck is constantly moving."
More blog postings
