Current location:	Rotterdam
Current mood:	hopeful
Current music:	music from my buddy chris
Entry tags:	furs rotterdam

FURther explanation
I recently sent an email to the webmaster at a dutch fur site, and i thought that the explanation that i wrote of this fursuit portrait project and how it got started was a pretty good one- so to save myself time, i'm posting it here so i can direct people to it in the future:

This project began with my love of painting. I use to make paintings that were about trying to justify the medium. Trying to tell the world why they should love paint as much as i do. Then I realized that there is nothing special about paint in some objective sense, its just that it is what I love. Then I started painting pictures of stuffed animals -- something else people love and hold on to despite the fact that it is illogical. Just as you could never talk yourself out of loving your teddy bear-- i will always love to paint. You can see these paintings here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/89013128@N00/sets/1543421/

I made paintings of stuffed animals that were very large- 6 ft tall-- and then i thought -- "what if i painted an animal that really was this big?" _ well where do you find that? The Furries! So I did some research and I met some people. The first person i met was Richard AKA Rapid T. Rabbit --one of the oldest and most well known furies in the eastern united states. He posed for a portrait and then introduced me to Foxwell the Foxcoon who posed for the second painting. I met Otin (a tiger) at Anthrocon and he is the most recent portrait. you can see some of them here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/89013128@N00

The fursuit portraits, to me are about love and about longing- and the character of the fursona, the personality of the person inside, and the gap between the two- I'm painting in a very loose way and just reacting to the feeling of the situation- trying to capture the spirit of the person sitting in front of me- Its hard to explain in words, but when you see the paintings in person, you can feel something of the person they represent- both parts- the human and the animal.

I hope to show these paintings either in london or in New York- i'm talking to galleries and have a couple of good leads but nothing definite yet. Even for people who are not furies there is much in the subculture and in the paintings that anyone can relate to. I believe that it is part of the human condition to long to be something more than what we are.