Florida Skunk Ape

"Florida Skunk Ape" is one of two pieces submitted and accepted into
The National Arts Program's 2017 art exhibition held at the Orlando International Airport.
The exhibition will be held open to the public, at the Orlando International Airport, from August 24 through September 29, 2017, during the hours of 9am - 5pm..
This acrylic painting pays tribute to the photographs and reports of the Florida skunk Ape, utilizing witness descriptions and forensic evidence found at the reported sightings.
The skunk ape, also known as the swamp cabbage man, swamp ape, stink ape, Florida
Bigfoot, Louisiana Bigfoot, myakka ape, swampsquatch, and myakka skunk ape, is a hominid cryptid said to inhabit the U.S. states of Florida, North Carolina, and Arkansas, although reports from Florida are most common. It is named for its appearance and for the unpleasant odor that is said to accompany it.
Reports of the skunk ape were particularly common in the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1974, sightings of a large, foul-smelling, hairy, ape-like creature, which ran upright on
two legs were reported in suburban neighborhoods of Dade County, Florida.
Skeptical investigator Joe Nickell has written that some of the reports may represent sightings of the black bear (Ursus americanus) and it is likely that other sightings are hoaxes or mis-identification of wildlife.
The United States National Park Service considers the skunk ape to be a hoax.
In 2000, two photographs said to be of the skunk ape were taken by an anonymous woman and mailed to the Sheriff's Department of Sarasota County, Florida.
The photographs were accompanied by a letter from the woman in which she claimed to have photographed an ape in her backyard. T
he woman wrote that on three different nights, an ape had entered her backyard to take apples left on her back porch.
She was convinced the ape was an escaped orangutan.
The pictures have become known to Bigfoot enthusiasts as the "skunk ape photos".
Loren Coleman is the primary researcher on the photographs, having helped track down the two photographs to an "Eckerd photo lab at the intersection of Fruitville and Tuttle Roads" in Sarasota, Florida.
According to Chester Moore Jr., the photographs were taken in Sarasota County
near the Myakka River.