"When the artist's canvas is the flesh of a model, it's a tremendous challenge on both ends," says spokeswoman Dawn Tyndall.
Artists have to start slapping on coats of paint hours before the first spectators arrive to skirt Canadian indecency laws, because these models aren't wearing much at all -- and it can take six hours or more before the models are transformed into wild animals, mythological creatures, and other wild figures that defy explanation.
"We believe the human form is to be respected, honored and accepted and not hidden away as if there's something wrong," Tyndall says.
In 2008, Body Gras joined the "World Bodypainting Festival" -- an international competition started in Austria in 1996. It now attracts hundreds of artists and models, and tens of thousands of spectators all over the world.
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