Using a wide variety of canvases including railroad blueprints, star charts, geological and street maps, Welsh artist Ed Fairburn uses additive and subtractive techniques to create portraits that seem perfectly integrated with the topography of streets, mountains and rivers. It’s obvious in the images below that Fairburn’s process and approach to creating these stunning portraits continues to evolve. One of his most striking methods is to carefully follow map contours with a pen creating rows of lines that vary by width to create individual forms and shadows. The final portraits are so entwined with the map, it becomes hard to imagine one existing without the other.
You can see Fairburn’s work for yourself at Mike Wright Gallery in Denver, Colorado starting January 17th, and he also has prints available here.
[via Colossal]
