Back in my college Intermediate Painting class (I don't even want to think about how long ago that was!) our Prof gave us the assignment to chose alternative surfaces to work on. His only stipulations were that it had to be something other than canvas or regular paper. A lot of people worked on wood, one or two on newspaper or metal. One inspired chief painted on a wooden cutting board. I can't quite remember all of them, but I remember floundering for several days trying to think of something. Luckily he'd given us the assignment well ahead of time, so we could think about it and search for materials over a holiday weekend or something of the sort.
The idea came to me at home. I've always liked to collect Toler's old shoes when he gets new ones put on, and I have various old shoes from many of the other horses I've ridden over the years. I just thought it would be fun to do something with them someday--get them welded together or made into hooks or photo frames. Painting on them just never entered my mind. Until that weekend.
My project emerged pretty quickly. I decided to do a series, intending it to be a larger 6-10 shoe series, though I only painted two for the class assignment, exploring the imprint of place on horse and rider. I titled it, "Strides of Truth and Dream."
The first shoe, called "Lace Strides" painted with oil. This shoe depicts the memory of our favorite field, always carpeted by lush grass, clover, and thousands of Queen Anne's Lace. Rides through it were always more than just gallops; the field and its nature became part of us. Part of our bond, our memories, our dreams, our experiences, our realities.
The second shoe of the series, called "Ocean Strides" prepped with acrylic granules, painted with oil with varnish finish for the water. This shoe depicts a dream of galloping against the waves, in and out of surf. Hoof-print left on the shore, this is the conceptual remainder of that ride that not even the waves can mask.
After college I had seriously intended to continue with the series. But there was a practical limitation--the surface space of each shoe was just too small to depict the types of scenes I imagined. So, painting shoes fell by the wayside for a while.
Coming up... Ideas Reborn: Mythic Strides
