About

Peter Mitchell

I’m Peter — a Kiwi who moved to Melbourne, Australia in 2012. My passion for distance running has evolved into something unexpected and extraordinary: GPS art and digital content creating.

Over the years, I’ve completed more than 50 endurance events, including marathons (personal best of 3:18), Backyard Ultras covering up to 100 miles, and a full Everesting. I’m also a Type 1 diabetic, but I choose not to let it define me. I prefer to focus on what I can do. These days my running is more social and about community, staying healthy and getting out in nature.

Previously I worked in fleet routing and systems optimization—so planning, precision, and efficiency have always been part of my toolkit.

From first creating GPS art in 2021, I’m now considered one of the world’s leading GPS artists and digital GPS art creators — a reputation built not just on experience, but through consistent innovation, major media exposure, collaborations with global brands and a rapidly growing online following. My work has gone viral across Instagram and TikTok reaching over 100 million views and 7 million likes in my first year alone. I have growing communities of 9,000+ on Strava, 12,000+ on Instagram and 20,000+ followers on TikTok.

My art has been entered into four Strava art competitions winning all four.

Since April 2025 I’ve collaborated with Telstra, Footlocker, Coros, Melbourne Marathon, Hydralyte, Brooks Running and more with other exciting projects in the pipeline. I’ve also worked closely with software engineers creating design tools to help make this art form more accessible to everyone in the near future.

I’m Peter — a Kiwi who moved to Melbourne, Australia in 2012. My passion for distance running has evolved into something unexpected and extraordinary: GPS art and digital content creating.

Over the years, I’ve completed more than 50 endurance events, including marathons (personal best of 3:18), Backyard Ultras covering up to 100 miles, and a full Everesting. I’m also a Type 1 diabetic, but I choose not to let it define me. I prefer to focus on what I can do. These days my running is more social and about community, staying healthy and getting out in nature.

Previously I worked in fleet routing and systems optimization—so planning, precision, and efficiency have always been part of my toolkit.

From first creating GPS art in 2021, I’m now considered one of the world’s leading GPS artists and digital GPS art creators — a reputation built not just on experience, but through consistent innovation, major media exposure, collaborations with global brands and a rapidly growing online following. My work has gone viral across Instagram and TikTok reaching over 100 million views and 7 million likes in my first year alone. I have growing communities of about 9,000+ on Strava, about 12,000+ on Instagram and 20,000+ followers on TikTok.

My art has been entered into four Strava art competitions winning all four.

Since April 2025 I’ve collaborated with Telstra, Footlocker, Coros, Melbourne Marathon, Hydralyte, Brooks Running and more with other exciting projects in the pipeline. I’ve also worked closely with software engineers creating design tools to help make this art form more accessible to everyone in the near future.

Melbourne Marathon as Forrest Gump (my own beard)

Full Everesting on foot, my biggest ever running challenge

Co-created the Big Bird Trail with this local legend. Still Big Bird, now flying in GPS art

Backyard Ultra vibes with legends Lazarus Lake and Mick

What is GPS Art?

GPS Art is the creative act of recording your movements such as running, walking, swimming, kayaking with a GPS (Global Positioning System) device—like a sports watch (e.g. Coros, Garmin) or mobile app (e.g. MapMyRun, Strava)—to create large-scale drawings, words or designs on a map. It’s usually recorded as one continuous line. Strava is popular for sharing GPS Art, but it’s not required to create it. Below are some of the key techniques I use to create my GPS artworks.

Freestyle

High-precision art in completely open spaces such as large parks, sand dunes or even water. Freestyle pieces are best done very slowly on foot giving maximum control over the GPS recording and resulting in highly accurate, detailed artworks. with no limitations beyond the space being fully accessible Freestyle allows for incredibly precise works but a high quality GPS recording device and setup is required.

Street Routing

The most common form for GPS Art where designs are mapped primarily using streets, roads and paths. These pieces are often large-scale and challenging to control since the shapes are limited by the street layout. For the best results, Street Routing works best in areas with a high density of roads spread over a large area. Street Routing is often combined with Connect the Dots to overcome access issues or limited roads and achieve cleaner more precise results.

Connect the Dots

A style of GPS Art where the device is mainly being paused between points. The device connects these unpaused points with straight lines, producing bold geometric shapes with sharp angles. Because the device only records while unpaused, the total distance shown is often incredibly small even though the distance actually travelled to create the design is much greater. This style is also referred to as Teleporting, the Stop/Start or Pause Method.