I started working on this series of 48' x 48' black marker map drawings after hiking in Iceland in the summer of 2003. There are now 100 views of The World from Above—suburban street junctions, swamps, archipelagos, cities, countries and whole continents. Sometimes the content is inspired by a trip I have just made, sometimes by a location in a movie and other times just from an interesting graphic reference. I draw from existing mass-produced maps, so my freehand translations inevitably become naive renderings of modern cartographic technologies: they resemble the maps made by the early explorers of our world. The process of having to navigate with only a few known coordinates, of throwing yourself into the landscape and of making up the rest the best you can is very much a part of drawing itself. I also like the idea that a viewer who has a close relationship to a particular site and who knows where the roads actually lead to and from, or how the borders became the way they are, can complete the drawing according to his own historical and geographical references. This way, the maps are never finished and appear different to everyone.

Click on the thumbnails for larger views.
See installation shots from the show at greengrassi.