The birth of Tegan Stadnyck as a tattoo artist began in May of 1996 where she began her apprenticeship at White Mountain Tattoo in North Conway, NH with Gale Mosman. With her first memories of drawing all over everything she owned, Tegan grew up with a lust for the arts and music and pursued the knowledge of it. Informative art classes such as oil painting and printmaking were attended at Maine College of Art. Belonging to a figure drawing group for three years, also supplemented her learning. After endlessly mopping floors, answering phones, drawing, and practicing on willing pumpkins and oranges, she started tattooing on a regular basis in the fall of 1997. In 1999, she worked her first convention in NYC at the Roseland Ballroom. This sparked her desire to travel with the art.

After spending many years working under Gale, Tegan ventured on to St Thomas, USVI where she worked at Ink Designs under the amazing French artist, Luc Zietek. There she was priveledged to tattoo on the islands of St John and Puerto Rico at the Old San Juan tattoo convention also. Island fever settled in proceeding seven months, She traversed back to her NH ties, and worked at Kelly's Tattoo in Lincoln, NH for Tim Mosman for eight months. Tegan decided to move to Massachusetts to pursue more custom tattooing since most of the shops she'd worked at had been street shops. This brought her to a year long stint at The Shining Star in Peabody, MA. Since the opening day of Lightwave Tattoo, June 30, 2003, this has been her home. More.