Thousandfurs Print

This is Thousandfurs. Animal woman, mammal, furred woman.

She is wearing a hair-cloak of furred mammals, alluding to the Grimm’s fairy tale “Allerleirauh” or “Thousandfurs” in which the king’s daughter makes herself a cloak of disguise from the pelts of many animals in order to escape her father’s unwanted attention (he wants to marry her).

She is also a hairy woman – embracing the fact that we are mammals, like all the furred creatures around her: biting, snarling, scratching, stalking, roaring, sniffing, licking, listening, protecting, hunting, climbing, purring animal.

Hair can be understood as a symbol of power – of both the psyche, as it grows from the head, and of the fertile, alive animal self; just as cutting it has sometimes been seen as a way of removing strength or agency.

Combined, these ideas express something about the animal cloak we must make and put on in order to escape a rigid system of toxic patriarchy and about living in that animal skin, both metaphorically and literally: not altering or diminishing our bodies or wild selves to please the insane culture or clearcutting our bodily wild forests which contain so much of our power.

Print from an original oil painting on wood made in 2018.