Charles Burns, Roving Artist

Just Paper and Scissors

A SILHOUETTE PORTRAIT should be both accurate and quickly made. I’ve been cutting them for thirty years and believe I can achieve both. When performed well, silhouette cutting is fun, fast and incredibly entertaining.

I’m Charles Burns, and people book me as their Roving Artist for weddings, corporate dinners and a host of other interesting events. I’ve also written the book, made the film, and even made an appearance on QI. I never tire of speaking about this often-overlooked niche in the history of art.

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Silhouettes for the modern age

Silhouettes cut at events are mounted in smart branded cards for guests to take home. For weddings I also offer a set of signed fine art prints – a limited edition featuring all the silhouettes cut on the day – mounted together as a lasting record of everyone who was there.

People say that watching me cut a silhouette is an object lesson in hand-eye coordination. “How on earth did you discover you could do that?” they tend to ask. Most people associate silhouettes with the Regency period. The equipment hasn’t changed (a pair of scissors and a pocketful of paper) but my presentation today is deliberately fresh and modern.

The Eighteenth Century Selfie

The Eighteenth Century Selfie is a talk I gave at TEDx in Arendal in Norway. It features a live portrait sitting with an audience member. If you’d like to understand what I do and why I do it, this is the best place to start. Please watch and like, every upvote helps bring it to a wider audience.

My Story

After leaving art college, with a degree in Fine Art, I spent the next twelve years working as a street portrait artist in London’s Covent Garden. It was while working there that I taught myself the then-vanished art of cutting silhouettes. If you visited Covent Garden in the 1990s, perhaps you remember me there?

Since then, silhouettes have taken me everywhere: cutting across five continents, to Windsor Castle and to the National Portrait Gallery in London (where I once found myself cutting the silhouettes of Presidents Clinton and Mandela at the same event).

This website tells the story. These recent articles from my blog will give you a flavour:

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