Welsh artist Ed Fairburn works in a variety of media and topics, but we are particularly taken with his map portraits. Using pencil, pen, and paint, Fairburn translates both naturally occurring and manmade features of a map into the lines and character of a portrait, almost reminiscent of palm reading. With these pieces, he strives “to combine the geography of our facial features with the geography of the earth.” The resulting portraits are beautiful and fascinating. I’d love to be able to inspect one of these pieces up close.
Fairburn has made a select few portraits available as prints at Not on the High Street, including some that you see here.
{ Images via Ed Fairburn }