Archie Hayes English artist Ed Fairburn uses vintage road maps and star charts as canvases for drawn portraits. Cross-hatched patterns and shaded regions inside roads, borders, and rivers conform to the contours of faces as if the photos had always been quietly hidden in the map’s topography.
“In his hands, both built infrastructure and natural phenomena echo the organic human form,” says Mike Wright Gallery. “National highway systems become capillaries, and the tangle of Paris’ alleyways become the wrinkles that give the face history and individuality.”
