Chris Brown raised a lot of eyebrows in the last few days after showing off a new tattoo that looks suspiciously like a portrait of his beaten up ex-girlfriend Rihanna. But now the tattoo artist who did the inking is weighing in, and frankly he’s pretty bummed that our minds went there. Celebrity tat guru Peter Koskela opened up to E! News and firmly denied that the image depicts the abused pop singer. “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,” he said. “That was crazy to me, that he would come to me and say, ‘Hey, I want Rihanna’s face on me.’”
Chris’ reps have tried to shead a little light on what the image is actually supposed to represent. “His tattoo is a sugar skull (associated with the Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead) and a M.A.C cosmetics design he saw,” they explain. “It is not Rihanna or an abused woman as erroneously reported. It is peeling right now.” According to Koskela, the image is looking a little roughed up because his skin hasn’t totally recovered yet. “People thought it was a beat-up face, but it takes two weeks to heal because the neck is constantly moving.”
The artist feels genuinely horrible about the whole media sh-tstorm his work has unleashed. “I would never promote any kind of domestic violence like that,” he insists. “Even if he asked me to do it, I would have bounced 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.” Next time maybe Chris should just go with a butterfly.
[Photo: Getty Images]
