Land artist Justin Bateman, a British ex-pat living in Chiang Mai, Thailand, creates remarkably detailed mosaic portraits out of pebbles and stones that he finds on his travels. Bateman, who is inspired by the iconic sand mandalas of Tibetan monks, believes that his work should be ephemeral and leave no trace.
The monks will spend many hours creating sand mandalas, only to blow them away once complete. Impermanence is an important feature of my work; how long does an artwork need to exist in order for it to have value. You might say pebbles are my pixels. …My work is impermanent, I leave only footprints.
