cool

I love how that even those risque pieces were perfectly okay for the main halls. :)
Hooray for a departure from the prudishness of most everyday societies!

that's just wonderful...

V.

That's so cool... the art really suits the place.

Congrats - a show is a show!

Really admirable stuff :-D We have a funky little gallery in town, I really should approach them. Alas, my work does not look as nice as this heh

I'd say give it a try! Depending on the type of gallery some are more open than others about unusual stuff. Some of them regularly host collective exhibits for indie artists and those aren't too hard to get into. Or they might direct you to local art clubs and such which may be helpful. Pubs with punk/underground/queer themes might also be interested in hosting exhibits of small works like this one.

I live in a little liberal arts college town, it's an interesting place

Yay, game pub.

I would guess that somewhat being takes on classical art, and the fantasy and cartooning aspects might lead them to cut you some slack on the rating...

That's certainly a factor, plus lots of people don't seem to find realistic furry art arousing, so as long as no actual sexual acts are shown they just see it as bizarre creatures. I want to try with some more explicit works next year though in order to see how people approach them.

It would be interesting to see...

probably just an extension of the attitude that allows things like statues of mermaids and mermen with visible nipples and penises

What did those guys in there feel about those paintings?


I just wonder if one of them were like "Oh those dirtty furries!"

At least one person immediately recognized it as "furry" stuff. X-D But he seemed to consider furry artwork a separate thing from the "dirty" stuff, which he identified with sex in fursuits. This is an interesting development I'm noticing lately, and probably an unintended side effect of fursuiters getting into the spotlight and becoming the face of the fandom instead of artists. Back in the 1990s and 2000s when somebody mentioned dirty furries the mind immediately went to porn drawings, but now the first thing outsiders think of is the one they heard about the most, that is fursuits and fursuit sex. This is bad for suiters and still bad for the community at large, but I think it is actually an improvement for artists because the artwork is more likely to be seen as general cartoon/fantasy art rather than a specific fetish like it was considered before. In fact erotic subjects are pretty common in other genres and there's no reason furry art had to be singled out because of them.

Hmmm. Still, I'd be careful now before having an exhibition with anthro art, even clean one. Maybe finally anthro doodles and paintings, were they clean or erotica, won't be a big deal anymore. That's what I hope.
But the problem is not only the fursuits. It's the bunch of furry drama, and the bad side of furries being enhanced by the media's.
Not all people who draw fantasy/anthro art, even porn, aren't that bad side of the furry thing. I draw anthro and fantasy art, the furry smut in this very account (which I only show here on internet furry places). I don't even consider myself furry, I look average in real life, I don't have stereotypical furry attitudes... but if one day the fact of showing some good anthro/fantasy art give people bad reactions because of the mass-media's, I'll limit it to closed furry niches. Otherwhise, all will become "secret garden".

Glad you found some place where people are open-minded about it, and where erotica is welcome.

Thanks! Although Italy has its quirks too: female nudity is not a big deal at all but male nudity or anything suggesting gay characters may be treated differently and considered less acceptable. I'll have to try a bit of that too.

I seem to remember you live in Europe too right? From what I see people here have no idea of stereotypes about furries, and even if they do, they don't care about them as much as Americans do. If you are having an art show people may or may not like your art but nobody would bash it specifically because it's associated with furries, because nobody thinks furries are something to be upset about. Usually they have no idea at all what furry means. So I never use the work "furry" when showing my artwork around, because nobody over the age of 30 knows or cares what it is and I would just confuse them. In years of exhibits this is the first time I find somebody who already knew about the furry community, and he knew just because a gaming pub is a nerdy place where you are more likely to find young people who spend a lot of time on internet. But I guarantee you won't find an art gallery attendee out of 10.000 who has any idea what furry is, both because of age (gallery visitors tend to be older and well adjusted) and because they have completely different interests which are often even weirder as furry stuff. I regularly meet middle age men and women which look pretty obsessed by occultism, New Age, nonsensical postmodern philosoply and stuff like that. The kind of dumbness we see on image boards is so far off their radar that probably they wouldn't even understand it if you tried to explain it.

I'm not sure why the US media is so obsessed with showing people the worst of the worst and telling them that everything is bad and stupid and they should think bad of everything. But apart from that, I often have the impression that the only people taking furries so goddamn seriously are we furries ourselves. The people out there don't actually give a shit about drama or internet stereotypes until somebody rubs them in their face.

In Denmark, nobody knows anything about Furries - let alone what the term means. So you're always 100% empty of any associations of any kinds. The only people who know about furries and furry are furries themselves, generally nudity here and (porn in general) is seen very okay and lightly on, no matter if its male, or female nudity, and no matter if its gay, or straight, or involving anthropomorphic animals in general (We got a lot of crazy fetish stuff here, and in rest of the North too XD), so its always seen as "the usual" X3 And that is really good, because nobody judges you here :) Not even the fursuiters, like i said. Nobody is even aware of the whole fursuit sex stuff, so all they see is "Funny Animal Mascots" And people just view that as funny and entertaining from the older, or as regular cosplay from the younger audiences. We also got many various subcultures here, furries, otherkins, otakus, therians, goths, punks, ravers, any other interest etc So much diversity, acceptance, and open-mindedness. I love it. There even has a type of anmthropomorphic animal art showcase at some museum at some point and some of it had a old rennaisance flair to it, and it was even with some erotic stuff and nudity. But again the whole thing about Italy is that damn catholic cultural stuff (no offense, i honestly dont like religion at all, prefer spirituality) that has strange view on sexuality, thats abrahamic faiths for you, lol - The pagans (in general) had a more open, relaxed, crazy, and extremely (maybe too extreme?) acceptance of any kind of sexuality. So yeah lol.

personally i'd rather have you make some male furry nudity or erotic stuff instead ;) But Again, i only find the male body (and male furry body at that) attractive. hehe. To each their own, right? ;)

That's exactly what I mean! And I hate the catholic side of Italian culture too, so no offense there. X-D Some of the worst drama we've had in the Italian furry community came from religious furs who just couldn't respect people with different standards than theirs.

And I should really draw more males. I'm actually heteroflexible, I do find some male types attractive, but I find male bodies much more difficult to draw than female bodies for some reason, and I have rarely have good ideas for erotic male pictures. The next sketch commissions I'm working on are all males though, so stay tuned! :-3

It'd be much more simple if characters on artwork were that, characters (nothing against therians, I'm somewhat one of them, just grown out of the subculture to only keep the artistic side), and if the sex in the furry cons was only private stuff (WHY brag in aloud to the media's, it's stupid, when one knows how stupid media's can be?)

Hmmm. Artistically, I could bring something in an artistic collective, I'll see the reactions.

Anyway, you sound like one of the most reasonable artists on this place.

I hope you'll do at some point. When people look at artwork framed on a wall, next to other artwork of different kinds, they aren't likely to think about obscure internet stuff. It's really a different world. I'm not sure whether I'm reasonable but I'd certainly like more furry artists beak out of the shell into the art world at large... we have been isolating ourselves for too long.

Hm. Too true. Now I gotta draw some pieces for ConceptArt in Arlon (the leader of that group of artists is a friend of mine).

Funny enough, I told some awesome artists to publish in fanzines: no response.

Awesome! I learned a lot from the site conceptart.org when it was more active, the artists who work in that field are real masters of technique. I suspect fanzines on paper are a bit dead these days, but it's a pity, I liked them too. :-P

But there's a group of artists in Arlon, South Belgium, very different from the internet site, who made a local collective of artists under the name ConceptArt. There's a bit everything: many comics drawers, painters, but also people making underground, experimental movies, and even a guy who plays techno music but with some interesting moods, as a background sound to give artists some ideas.

Fanzines are alas mostly dead. I remember Khimaera, where there used to be awesome fantasy artists publishing there. I still must have an issue somewhere about lycanthropy.

woooooooooow!

Interesting to see how peoples react to that ( I mean, I read your comments here about the feedback of peoples ), if peoples can have an open mind and be ok with that ( and nudity and all ) I think it's a good progress.

I found interesting how peoples react in different place ( like my art with more nudity have a better feedback with peoples from, for example, France versus peoples from where I live ( Quebec, Canada ), usually french peoples are more open with my art and I get really good feedback versus the other who will perhaps not hate that but will see that more like furry porn when it's not usually my intention ( I mean I did stuffs more pornographic but usually I keep that for me and really few peoples see that, usually it's just nudity when I think peoples need to stop to associate that with sexuality something I stop to do after doing art with live model and with body paint ( I don't do body paint but I know some peoples who did and some time I really like that X3 ).

Your arts seem to fit well with the light and colors of the place too. :D