Sunny Buick was raised by an unstable alcoholic single mother who put her life in danger many times. At the age of 15, she decided that she wanted to be a tattoo artist. That was also when she began drinking and using drugs. From the Rockabilly scene, through extremely dysfunctional relationships, to Paris–listen to her wild story and journey into recovery.
Sunny Buick was born in British Columbia, Canada in a small cabin in the woods. She was then raised in California by a single hippy mother, who always encouraged her creative spirit. Finally arriving in San Francisco at age fifteen after years and years of constant displacement, she finally felt at home. The next year she decided to become a tattoo artist after meeting some influential misfits. Many years later after finishing college she gained a tattoo apprenticeship with Henry Goldfield and it was in North Beach, not too far from where Lenny Bruce fell out of his hotel window that her career was started. Her work is heavily influenced by tattoo imagery which has become a symbolic language in her work.
Sunny started exposing her paintings around the same time as she started tattooing. She has appeared in several art books like Vicious, Delicious, Abitious about female artists in the lowbrow scene, also in Beatsville put out by Gallery Outré. In San Francisco she participated in the Mexican community ritual of making Day of the Dead installations in museums and galleries including the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. In 2003 she organized a massive group art show and catalog called “Sci-Fi Western”. She’s written for Juxtapoz and several tattoo magazines. She was photographed by the French artists Pierre et Gilles. She currently lives in Paris where she daily finds inspiration and lives out her artistic dreams.
