Moving Forward into a Whole New Realm

Don’t let Rowan Magennis’s youth fool you.

Rowan is well on her way to becoming one of the most respected tattoo artists in North Texas. She’s won awards. She’s been asked to be a judge at tattoo conventions. A trained 3D computer artist, she’s working to shift tattooing from the merely physical into the virtual realm.

And she’s only 25.

Rowan Magennis is from Benoni, now a suburb of Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa. (Charlize Theron and Charlene, Princess of Monaco are also from Benoni.) She attended Open Window, a prestigious art and film school, learning 3D art design for films and computer games. While she was in school, at only 17, Rowan started apprenticing at a local tattoo studio. It was here that she first started combining the skills she was learning in art school with the techniques she was learning at the tattoo studio.

Rowan’s father is, according to his daughter, something of a “university tourist.” When he came to Dallas for business, he found out about the University of Texas at Dallas’s School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communications. Rowan remembers, “I got a text from my dad asking if I wanted to move to the US to finish school. When I said of course I did, we put our minds to it, and six months later, I was at UTD.”

After graduation, Rowan was “scouted” by Dark Age Tattoo for their Fort Worth location. Opened in 2014 in Denton, Dark Age Tattoo wanted to open a second location in Fort Worth. They opened their doors in 2021 in the heart of the West 7^th area. The studio, located over Rodeo Goat, is open and spacious, with a high-tech-yet-welcoming vibe.

While she will work with a customer to give them precisely the tattoo they want, Rowan favors large pieces with a decided fantasy flavor. Her pieces are a testament to her training as a 3D artist; through a combination of perspective, negative space, gorgeous colors, and an insane amount of detail (“I’m detailed oriented kind of to a fault!”), a tattoo by Rowan is a work of art anyone would be proud to own.

Just being an incredible artist who creates gorgeous tattoos isn’t enough for Rowan, however. She wants to push the boundaries of tattoos. “What if you had a tattoo of a cathedral on your arm that you could walk through in the virtual realm?” she asked. “Or what if your tattoo was part of a video game that you could actually play?”

©Rowan Magennis

“There’s so much potential there,” Rowan said. “Moving tattooing beyond the limitations of the skin is something I really want to explore. As a culture, we aren’t quite ready to microchip or to embed a QR code in a tattoo, but the idea of moving forward into a whole new realm of tattooing is too exciting.”

One of the things Rowan loves about tattooing in the US in general and at Dark Age in particular is the support artists give each other. “We all grow together,” she said. “It’s all about exploring your true potential as an artist.” She values the other artists at Dark Age; the older, more experienced artists are always available to answer questions and mentor the younger artists. “When I moved to the US, I was stagnating,” Rowan admitted. “I had a lot of beautiful ideas, but I didn’t have the skills I needed.”

Now Rowan is building her portfolio and her reputation as an artist. When I went to visit Rowan at Dark Age, she was working on beautiful leg sleeve. (The client, Shelby, was nice enough to let me talk with Rowan and take pictures.) It’s a gorgeous piece of fantasy work that literally took my breath away. She may only be 25 (“Hey! That’s a quarter of a century!”), but Rowan Magennis is making a name for herself.

For  images of Rowan’s work, click through the slider below!

Follow Rowan on Instagram: @rowan.magennis

Follow Dark Age Tattoo Fort Worth: @darkagetattoostudioftw