Tove Lo's 5 Tattoos & Meanings
James Holden Tove Lo has a large tattoo on her upper left arm of a girl riding a bumblebee from the Mark Ryden painting Clear Hearts, Grey Flowers.
The tattoo reminds her of the times she spent in her first band called Tremblebee. “I used to have black hair and bangs when I was in that band, and since it was my first band that I was part of it meant so much to me. I had my first gigs with that band,” she told Arena. “Then I found this painting of Mark Ryden’s that I really enjoyed, he’s an American painter who’s super talented. I saw this picture and I’m like ah, that just goes straight to my heart, so I decided to put it all over my arm.”
The painting was created to be the cover of alternative rock band Jack Off Jill’s 2000 album Clear Hearts, Grey Flowers. Jack Off Jill’s lead singer Jessicka Addams came up with the concept for the artwork and the based this particular character off of herself. However it seems that Tove Lo didn’t know that the painting was designed for an album cover. In an instagram post, Addams explained that she was flattered by the tattoo, even it is was unintentional. She writes: “[Tove Lo] happens to have (unknowingly) my face on her arm. This image is from a painting by Mark Ryden created to become Jack Off Jill’s “Clear Hearts, Grey Flowers” album cover released on July 18th 2000. It doesn’t upset me that the singer claims to know nothing of this album, but it does exist.”
This was her second tattoo and it’s much larger than her first, which was the scorpion on her chest. “I went from that to this big one, this Mark Ryden painting,” she says in a YouTube vlog. “I remember after I did this one I was kinda like ‘Fuck. What did I just do? It’s over my whole arm.’ But now it’s just part of my body.”
