Tez Gordon

Tez was born in Leeds in the early 80’s. Descended from Irish immigrants, Tez grew up on the streets, playing football and drawing cartoons and characters for fun.

Tez left education at 15 years old (times were different back then) and started cleaning cars for spending money whilst still drawing for fun. After a few laborious dead-end jobs, Tez decided to take up a trade, so picked up some more education at building college - as a plasterer. Using his creative skills Tez styled & created ornate plaster-cast covings for manor houses all around the country. His love for art never died but it took a backseat whist he built up his trade.

Tez loved this line of work but his hands were taking a beating, so he decided to hang up his moulds and look for work in a creative office environment where could sit down for once!

Working in an office space, Tez was able to pick up his pens and pencils again. Fast forwards some years to the early 00’s when his love and passion of art was transformed forever – when he and a long-time friend went to get a tattoo! Tez had been tattooed before, but this time it was special. Not a simple design picked off of a wall, but a hand drawn piece. Tez fell in love. A realisation hit & he decided to follow his passion of art and try to get work in a tattoo studio.

After too many years of unsuccessful attempts, Tez decided to take it upon himself & try to learn the hard way. And so he and his long-time friend bought some cheap tattoo machines & started tattooing each other in the kitchen!

After quickly realising the environment should be clean & sterile, Tez decided to rent a small studio space to hone his skills. Fast forward some more years to the late 00’s & after the donation of skin from many friends and family members, Tez’s list of customers was growing, meaning he needed more space, and so he was ready to open his own real tattoo parlour and not some loft above a beauticians! This was on Hyde Park corner in Leeds, with his long-time friend from the kitchen days!

In a very unfortunate turn of events Tez broke both of his hands. As anyone can imagine, this was devastating, but rather than dropping his passion, Tez decided to stay within the body modification world & turned his hand to body piercing, knowing that the smaller periods of time working on customers would be much shorter than tattooing, giving his hands more time to heal.

After becoming a successful body piercer, Tez’s hands finally healed and he was able to pick up his machines again, but as there wasn’t any space for another tattooer in the studio, Tez decided to open up his current tattoo parlour, the House of Hoodoo in Harrogate. And here we are today.

House of Hoodoo is Tez’s 3rd successful studio space.