This print deals with the adventurous spirit of the American military, collecting tattoos from abroad and waging war in the Middle East. The Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden is represented by the mash-up of Sailor Jerry tattoo designs set against a luminescent drop of oil. The drop shape applies equally to the venom of the snake, the ink of the tattoo needle and the lost blood.

Like woodblock prints, the tattoo has a rich past, often intersecting with other art forms and crossing cultures. In Japan the tattoo has evolved to a high art over the past 7000 years. It is not surprising that the modern form is largely based on the Japanese tradition. Prints that deal with tattoo themes are known as Irezumi.

With the era of global shipping, sailors returned home with designs from around the world. Most prized were the elaborate and colourful full body tattoos from Japan. These tattoos took months to complete and were poked in by hand using a range of bamboo and steel needles. Many sailors had no chance to undergo the full procedure, so they created a demand for an easier style that still evoked the oriental designs. Smaller pieces were carved into timber and transferred to the skin as a woodblock print. With a needle and ink the print was made into a tattoo. Snakes and dragons were popular subjects. The Japanese tattooists were also woodblock artists working from popular designs. It is likely they also adapted sexualised shunga prints for this new international trade.

With the patent of a mechanical needle by Thomas Edison in 1876, the process became a booming business. Tattoo parlours sprung up worldwide in major seaports with their walls papered in loud coloured designs known as flash. After the invention of celluloid films the design were no longer carved in wood but etched onto the plastic surface. The etching was rubbed with a little carbon powder and then transferred onto Vaseline smeared on the shaved skin.

This print design is based on two pieces of flash art, the snake and the siren, created by Sailor Jerry, or Norman Keith Collins (1911 - 1973) of Honolulu, Hawaii. He was perhaps the most adept American tattoo artist working in the naval style. His work remains popular and influential. Life and death, or love and war, are primary concerns for a military man. A picture of beauty and the beast represents these dual themes.

The woodpecker spends a lifetime tapping and chiselling into trees, chasing for food under the bark and making cavities big enough to nest inside. The busy little bird is found throughout the world and there are more than 180 different species. The head of the woodpecker is highly adapted to the incessant impact of hammering into timber. Apart from a pointed beak and a super-long tongue, the woodpecker has a thick skull and a relatively small brain. It is able to absorb the shock of each blow by momentarily clenching its mandibular muscles.

Japan has its own woodpeckers with three endemic subspecies of Picus awokera, known as kitsutsuki. In 1930 a group of sosaku hanga artists began publishing a magazine of woodblock art under the Kitsutsuki banner. The woodpecker was again used as a mascot for woodblock artists when Un'ichi Hiratsuka formed Kitsutsuki-kai, the Woodpecker Society, and in 1942 the group began publishing Kitsutsuki hangashu, the Woodpecker print collection.

Woody Woodpecker the cartoon character made his debut in the film Knock Knock in 1940. In contrast to his industrious Japanese cousins, this was a bird of another feather, brash and loud, if not demented and slightly sadistic. His raucous laugh and his appetite for destruction made Woody a popular character with the US armed forces during WWII. With a busted beak and a smoking cigar, his red head was soon decorating the barracks and the nosecones of bombers. After the war Woody settled down but he remains an emblem of the American fighting spirit.