Stephen Wiltshire has the amazing talent of drawing city skylines from memory. Having spent only a few hours in a helicopter flying from Brooklyn to the tip of Manhattan, he memorized the city skyline and headed back to a studio, where he spent the next 3 days sketching the skyline.
After spending the early years of his life as a mute London-born Stephen found his voice through drawing. Later diagnosed with autism, drawing began to be the way he communicated with the world. At age nine he began to speak and his art continued to flourish.
Using his drawing’s to help him learn and encouraged by his family, Stephen created a series of 26 coded pictures to help him speak, all of which corresponded to a letter in the alphabet. He uses only graphic pens as he commits his photographic memory to the high-grade paper.
“ Do the best you can and never stop. Until every detail is perfect, we will not rest. ”
The panoramic drawing will be featured on a billboard that will be displayed at JFK airport terminal. Wiltshire’s New York panorama will complete his collection of nine works depicting some of the world’s most iconic cities — London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Rome, Madrid, Frankfurt, Dubai, and Jerusalem.
Well done.
