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Extreme Body Painting Turns Humans into Animals

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While at first glance you think you're seeing ordinary paintings of animals on canvas, look a little closer and you'll notice that the canvases are actually naked human beings. Shannon Holt is a body painter based in Florida who has the incredible ability to transform the human body into a canvas for art. In the Florida Wildlife Series she's taken animals like a blue heron, a red fox and a Florida alligator (with its baby) and carefully painted them onto complete bodies of human beings.

Shannon made it into the top three spots for Skin Wars on the Game Show Network. Though she didn't end up winning the grand prize of $100,000, she became well known for her extreme art. Each of her portraits takes between six to twelve and a half hours to complete.

She's talked about the ephemeral nature of her art, or how her work isn't permanent. “It’s here and then it’s gone,” she said. “It’s kind of like ourselves — we’re here on the Earth and then we’re gone, and it’s beautiful.”

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Shannon Holt: Website
via [Huffington Post]

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