Artist Ed Fairburn‘s Maps series turns road and subway maps into amazing canvases for his ink and pencil portraits. The artist utilizes the multicolored, patterned surface of each map to echo the complex forms of the human face through a careful study of the physical attributes of the terrain and the features of chosen subjects.
Fairburn says, “Emphasis is placed on the ‘fragmented’ texture of the skin, a process which has encouraged my work to evolve from its occupation of plain paper to the potential occupation of other, pre-fragmented or pre-patterned surfaces.”
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images courtesy of Ed Fairburn