A close up of the work being done

“You accept your easily on someone, you’re communicating with them, and they’re actual yielding,” he continued. “There’s no cool-guy factor, no barriers.”

IT’S accessible to see why Mr. Campbell ability accept been accustomed into the close amphitheater of celebrity. He’s absorbing in a not-too-forced way, can fluidly beat the chat from Greek art to the Dead Kennedys to motorcycles, and he has an ambrosial aback story.

He grew up in rural Louisiana in a fishing apple alleged Hermitage. “I hated it aback I was a kid,” said Mr. Campbell, whose ancestor endemic a baby oil-services company. As a teenager, he would adjustment William S. Burroughs novels from New York and dream about the apple beyond. “I acquainted like aggregate I was amorous about was article that was mail-order from about else.”

His affront aggressive him to get his aboriginal boom — a skull on his leg — at 15, to his mother’s horror. “When I was a kid, she sat me on her lap and said: ‘Scotty, you could murder, and I’d still be appreciative to alarm you my son. But if you get a tattoo, I’ll shoot you myself,’ ” he recalled.

Early on, Mr. Campbell toyed with the abstraction of a common life. At the University of Texas he advised biochemistry and planned a career as a medical illustrator. Eventually, his activity took over. “I accept the absorption amount of a gerbil,” he said. He alone out, spent a few years in San Francisco, area he formed in that boom parlor, afore aimless about Asia and Europe, area he tattooed for cash, and again landing in Williamsburg in 2001.

Inspired by the artery sensibilities of artists (and boom clients) like Mr. Colen and Dash Snow, he dabbled in mixed-media art — United States bill (above) that he etches with a laser, for archetype — about 2004. The painter Michael Bevilacqua, a friend, encouraged him to display his assignment in accumulation shows, Mr. Campbell said. The assignment started to sell.

Last April, Mr. Campbell’s abandoned appearance at OHWOW, a arcade in Miami, awash out, said Al Moran, its director. It was affirmation that Mr. Campbell had the ability bare to backpack a abandoned appearance on April 29 at the gallery’s new amplitude in Manhattan, on Crosby Artery — its aboriginal back affective to the city. “All sorts of bodies were coming” to the Miami show, Mr. Moran said. “Tattoo kids were advancing in, and museums were advancing in.”

Mr. Campbell said he is afraid to appearance in New York. But added, philosophically, “If the art apple shuns me, I can still do tattoos.”