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World famous Silhouettist
In his long career as a silhouette artist, Charles has cut many notable portraits, including silhouettes of HM The Queen. He is the UK’s busiest silhouette artist, working at a huge variety of events at home and overseas.
Charles has appeared at all kinds of venues and cut nearly 200,000 profiles. These include three portraits of the Queen, President Clinton (while visiting the National Portrait Gallery) and an ever-growing number of TV personalities, writers, artists and sporting celebrities.
“I’ve worked with Charles for many years. He is simply the best silhouette cutter in the UK, possibly the world!”
Charles was born in London in 1961 and educated at Ampleforth, North Yorkshire. Taught to draw in the classical tradition by the sculptor John Bunting (a student of Leon Underwood), he attended art colleges in Exeter, Wolverhampton and Lyon, France. He graduated with a First Class Honours Degree in Fine Art (painting) in 1984.
After art college, he worked for many years as a street artist in London’s famous Covent Garden. He started by drawing 10-minute portraits in pencil and later began cutting silhouettes. He moved naturally from Covent Garden into corporate events, where he found a very different audience to the world of fine art.
Charles Burns currently lives with his family in Reading, where he has converted a small eighteenth-century barn for use as a painting studio which doubles as an art gallery, sometimes open to the public.