Towering genius: Artist creates landmark masterpieces by stacking cities’ most famous buildings

THIS is Scotland’s capital as it has never been seen before.

Artist Matthew Ellwood is using his towering talent to reimagine Britain’s towns and cities as if their most famous buildings were piled on top of each other.

He has already captured places in the north of England such as Newcastle, Sunderland and his home town of Durham as if they were laid out vertically.

Now Matthew has turned his attention to Scotland. He spent nine months researching and visiting Edinburgh to portray it in the shape of a tower, with the castle perched on top.

He is currently doing the same with Glasgow – and is even planning something similar for the many historic distilleries on our famous whisky trail.

“I thought Edinburgh would be pretty straightforward to do because it is built on a volcano,” he told The Sunday Post.

“But then I realised a lot of the buildings in the old part of town are about seven floors high and the detail involved in doing hundreds of sash windows and little pub fronts took an age. It was challenging.”

Matthew came up with the idea after struggling to sell his more traditional work.

He travels to the towns and cities he wants to paint for long weekends. He drops into visitor information centres and talks to locals in pubs to get a better idea of what should be included.

“Glasgow has not been easy to do,” he said. “There is such a wealth of architecture there and the big problem will be which buildings to leave out.

“I have already started sketching the east end of the city but when you look up, some of the buildings in the west end and the city centre are staggering in their detail.”

Matthew’s prints cost about £60 and he added: “My wife has realised that this is something that could be done anywhere in the world. She is already asking if I could do Venice or Iceland – as long as she can come with me, of course.”

To see more of Matthew’s work, visit matthewellwood.com