Mekaya Martinez has loved tattoos since she was 12 years old. When she was 17, she got her first tattoo on her lower back so she could hide it from her mom. 

“I was used to painting and drawing, and once I started seeing people on TV or other family members, adults that had tattoos, I was like, ‘that’s so cool,’” Martinez said. “It’s like a drawing, but it’s on them forever, and it seemed so interesting to me.”

Now Martinez has opened her own tattoo business in her hometown of Santa Barbara at Phenix Salon Suites in suite 106 at 130 S. Hope Ave. in La Cumbre Plaza. 

Martinez specializes in a fine line, black work, ornamental style like mandalas and decorative pieces with lots of symmetry and patterns. 

“I always thought they were really pretty when I saw pictures online when it was popular back in 2014,” Martinez said. “I like that they hold up well with time.”

Martinez has always loved drawing, and she even participate in the Visual Arts Design Academy (VADA) at Santa Barbara High School. When she was 18, she moved to Los Angeles where she went to the Art Institute for graphic design before realizing what she really wanted to do was be a tattoo artist.

From there she started an apprenticeship under Saul Vargas at Ink Monkey in Venice for a year before she became an artist at the shop.

“It was really awesome to work amongst other artists,” Martinez said. “It’s a pretty big shop too so I got to meet some other artists, guest artists that came from other countries and other cities. It was really fun.”

After working at Ink Monkey for a few years, Martinez joined a couple piercers from the shop that opened their own private studio for piercings and tattoos. The shop allowed her to have a more private space as an artist.

She started to grow in popularity and had appointments booked a month and a half in advance. 

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Forced to stop working, Martinez moved back to Santa Barbara and ended up meeting her now fiancé. The two moved to San Diego where she hoped to get back into the tattoo game but was unable to find the right space. 

Martinez and her fiancé moved back to Santa Barbara in 2023, and this July she finally got to return to the tattoo world when she opened her business at Phenix Salon Suites.

“I’m just really excited to be here and have my studio up and be back into my craft, because it’s been a while,” Martinez said. 

Since returning to Santa Barbara, Martinez said she’s leaning into the local scenery to inspire her designs. 

“In the past I would resort to references that clients give me and brainstorming and searching for inspiration, but I noticed back in LA that it wasn’t exactly how I wanted my inspiration process to go,” Martinez said. 

Now she uses her free time to draw and take pictures of flowers and trees around town while she’s on runs or riding a bike, and then she incorporates those shapes into her work. 

During her sessions Martinez said she likes to listen to stand-up comedy from comedians like Shane Gillis, Louis C.K. and Tom Segura, but most of the time she finds herself in the creative zone, hyperfocused on her piece.

Her advice to aspiring artists is to keep drawing, focus on making raw artwork and not get lost in catering art for social media. 

“I do feel like it’s easy to lose your natural instinctive creativity, the yearning to create and feeling inspired,” Martinez said. “I feel like it gets muddied when people are just trying to turn themselves into art-producing machines.”

Martinez charges $150 an hour for sessions and can be reached at mmekaya@gmail.com to schedule an appointment.