
Topography of Touch
A fingerprint got ambitious and became a landscape.
From a distance, this is almost nothing. Black lines on white.
Then you move closer.
The lines bunch together, pull apart, curl, drift, and suddenly the surface begins to rise. Hills appear. Valleys form. Something that is completely flat starts behaving like terrain.
That illusion comes from density.
For centuries, engravers created shadow by putting lines closer together and light by leaving more space between them. No paint needed. Just pressure, rhythm, and repetition.
You can feel a similar logic here, though the lines refuse to settle into anything recognizable. They behave like contour lines on a map, fingerprints under magnification, even wood grain.
Your eye keeps trying to name the place.
It never quite gets there.
That’s part of the pleasure.
Which is a pretty good magic trick for ink.
FUN FACT
On a topographic map, contour lines connect points of equal elevation. When those lines squeeze tightly together, the land is steep. Spread them apart and the slope becomes gentle.
Related works

Quiet Spiral
This one is funny for about two seconds, and then it starts feeling a little personal. A lone figure sits in an open field, back turned, posture calm, while their head has become a frantic ball of scribbled pencil lines—part storm cloud, part doodle, part “nothing to worry about” from someone clearly worrying about everything. Next to them, on a plain wooden table, sits a single red apple, doing its best despite being hilariously underqualified.

Centerline
Like if a motorcycle had a trust issue and the universe sent a plane just to make it worse.

Mother, Abstracted
Moms see everything, which explains the giant eye.
Available as a museum-quality print.
Request this print