“When I studied Fine art at Leicester, my thesis was on Manet and in particular his painting “Luncheon in the Studio” as part of my research I found out that Manet would often like to joke visually incorporating “une blague’ Parisian for a trick or a joke.”

The ‘joke paintings’ created by Furr throughout his career show his humour in the most direct way. They sometimes appear throwaway but, as in the mid 2000s period, often deal with serious themes such as existence/death.

In 2006 when Furr turned 40 years old. He created three small paintings in this year that deal with his own existence. They are small, quickly executed ‘joke paintings’ that are rendered in radically simplified 2d – almost comic book – ways.