TODAY IS ABOUT SHOES ...

Shoes fascinate me. I am known for purchasing a pair of shoes just because there is a sensual feeling when looking at them although I may never wear them ... a pure sensual pleasure you may say.

Shoes as a symbol seem to carry a contradictory meaning: it could represent authority and power or humility and servitude; they are about movement with ease.
Shoes keep our feet warm and protected.

In some religions you are required to put off your shoes to enter the temple so showing humbleness and respect for the divine. In older times, and in our current times, not everybody can buy shoes so shoes become associated with freedom, comfort, and also wealth when they also can be associated with vanity and arrogance.

There are so many connotations related to shoes! High heels have erotic and/or sexual connotations; for some stiletto heels appears as a phallic symbol; worn, old shoes may be symbol of hardships and struggles; some sandals may symbolize the moon, and the list can go on and on. But ... old, worn shoes could represent warships and struggles.

Oil Pastels on Paper. BL (c) 2017

I think about shoes very often these days when listening or watching the news and learn about masses of people being displaced from their land to the unknown. I look at their feet. Many of them with a simple flat sandal, or worn ones, others without any shoes at all... Their facial expressions, their body language- the tiring walk of displacement- seem all to be represented in their shoes or no shoes. No safety... no comfort ... no protection of any kind... Their emotional life marked by unwanted dislocation... I wonder...would these masses of people be able to emotionally and psychologically repair themselves?... being able to trust the earth they are walking on?... trust each other?... continue having a sense of inner safety in the face of displacement?...

These and many more questions about the inner life of those that are forced to live their homeland fuels my current series of studies and paintings on shoes...