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Daniella D Johnson
A.K.A tattedcat 🤘😸
Automotive Painter
Daniella is based in Charleston, South Carolina USA. She has taken the automotive paint industry by storm and her instagram account surely shows it.
Daniella explained how growing up her father owned a body shop and he taught her all the basics involved and what was needed to get started. As long she can remember, she always had a passion for art and automotive painting. Starting her professional career at 17 doing small parts and cleaning up at a big rig shop. Daniella painted trucks and equipment for about 10 years but also did custom work at her dads small shop. Then decided enough of painting massive vehicles and moved into doing collision paint work all the while focusing on her art.
Daniella also being creative and known to an airbrush got a great break by painting custom softball bats for a company in Charleston. After a few year realised there was no real artist freedom and moved onto a similar company in Rochester NY. Had lots of artistic freedom for about a year and then…. Covid hit.
After that, the custom work she was doing just stopped as did the rest of the world. Three months later, the need for the bats she was creating didn’t unfortunately recover.
Personally I took an airbrushing course myself and loved it but quickly realised it wasn't for me. I loved holding the brush and feel of the paint but if I kept with it, this is surely the path I would be inspired to take. I absolutely love that fact that females are kicking ass like Daniella in this field.
Daniella put her Resume back out there and chose a shop in Charleston and has been there ever since. The passion that shines through Daniella is still strong with 30 years being in the industry next month.
“I’ve just been doing this for 30 years and I’ve lost none of my passion for what I do. If anything I’m more passionate. ”
Being in the game for some time I can only imagine the early day struggles with woman in a stereotyped 'man's role'. Like any job there are ups and downs and as Daniella explains she struggled quite a bit in her early days.
'Women in this industry just wasn’t a thing back then. Even today women are deterred from doing this work. Instagram has introduced me to all the wonderful women paving the path for our young lady’s. I wish I would’ve had this platform when I started my career.'
I completely agree with Daniella and social media allowing woman to connect across the world inspires us to keep at it, it is worth it and we can have those jobs we desire.
Follow this rad chick Daniella