Born 1945 in southern California. Lives and works in Honolulu and San Francisco.
Don Ed Hardy is a painter, printmaker, and tattoo artist. Fascinated by tattoos since childhood, Hardy has become a master of his craft while continuing his work in the more traditional mediums of painting and drawing. A scholar of tattoo history and lore, Hardy has curated tattoo exhibitions and written and published catalogs about the art of tattooing. Don Hardy first collaborated with Master printer Bud Shark in March 1995 to produce a portfolio of lithographs entitled Tattoo Royale.
In 2000, Hardy completed a 500 feet long scroll painting of 2000 dragons in honor of the turn of the century and the Dragon year. The scroll was exhibited at Track 16 Gallery in Los Angeles and traveled to the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art, the Cuenca Biennale, Ecuador, and the Yerba Buena Center for Contemporary Art, San Francisco.
Don Ed Hardy’s work is represented in the collections of The Honolulu Academy of Art, The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, The San Francisco Fine Arts Museum Achenbach Collection, and the University of Colorado Fine Art Galleries.
