Artist Paints the World With Google Street View

Bill Guffey has never walked the streets of London, New York or Barcelona. He has never visited the coast of Maine or watched the sun set in Italy over a Florentine villa.

But if you looked around his rural Kentucky studio, you would never know it.

Tableaus from European cities and every U.S. state (except for Hawaii) cover the walls of his home, illustrating the adventures of a presumably well-traveled artist. Yet the self-taught oil painter said he has never physically been to 99 percent of the places he has captured on canvas.

In 30 seconds on his computer, he can fly around the world with Google Street View and paint any place his cursor lands. The mapping tool give Guffey and other users a street-level window to many places in the world, navigating 360-degree horizontal and 290-degree vertical unbroken panoramas.

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