ARTISTS

Gilles Trehin

is a French artist, author, and creator of the imaginary city of "Urville". He struggles with Austism but since age 5 he found escape in drawing. His favortie subject matter is landscape and airplanes. When Trehin was 12 he began working on his design of Urville. Fascinated by the skyscrapers looming over New York City, Trehin gradually developed the idea for a similar sky-reaching economic capital in France. The name Urville comes from Dumont d'Urville, a scientific base in Antartica.

The French city of Urville exsists in two places: in the mind of Gilles Trehin and in the elaborate drawings he created.

But whats incredible isn't just the 300 detailed designs he created for the city's architechture and layout, but the entirely plausible history for his fictional city. Urville has been growing for 20 years ad doesn't show signs of stopping. The 40 year old artist intends to record every intricate detail of Urville.

Stephen Wiltshire

is an artist who draws and paints detailed cityscapes. At age 3 he was diagnosed with Austism. As a child he was mute and did not relate to others. He lived in his own world and was fond of drawing. One day at school his teachers took his supplies away to try to get him to ask for them back.

His first words ever spoken were "paper" and "pencil", like Picasso.

He has particular talent for drawing lifelike, accurate representations of cities, sometimes after having only observed them breifly.By the time he was 8 he had received his first commission from the British Prime Minister to create a drawing of Salisbury Cathedral. In 2001 he appreaded in a BBC documentary, Fragments of Geniusin which he was filmed flying in a helicopter over London and subsequently completeing a detailed and perfectly scaled aerial illustration of a four-square mile area. Within 3 hours his drawing included 12 historic landmarks and 200 other structures.

Similarly, he drew a panorama of Tokyo and a detailed picture of Rome, including the Vatican and Salisbury cathedral entirely from memory.His work is popular all over the world and is held in a number of important collections.

Ping Lian Yeak

is a young artist who's art is similar in subject matter to Trehin and Wiltshire. However, his drawing of architecture are painted in bright color in addition to a pen outline.

Yeak was unable to hold a pencil to write or to use a scissor to cut.In order to strengthen and develop his fine motor skills, his home program focused on tracing and coloring activities. These activities also served as a way for Ping Lian to be able to occupy himself, given his inability to appropriately engage in any leisure or socialization skills. Ultimately tracing became a catalyst for discovering his exceptional art talent.

His mom decided to develop his art skills by hiring 3 art teachers.This may have seemed like an overkill but Ping showed passion for drawing.At age 14 – “Don’t ‘dis’ the ability” - Ping Lian’s artworks were featured at the United Nations Headquarters in New York (April 2008) in honor of the inaugural World Autism Awareness Day.Ping Lian continues to create magnificent works of art using charcoal, acrylic, water color, ink and oil. He also continues to donate his works to organisations and charities. His art works have been featured in exhibitions in the United States, UK, Australia, Germany, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Malaysia.