The Red Shoes
Autumn 2005
9cm x 22cm x 8cm

Shown at OVADA  in 2006, now in private collection of Elizabeth Vooght

Description
Girl’s dancing shoes stitched into in red fabric scraps

Themes, Comments and Storylines
The Red Shoes are a celebration of creativity and the power of imagination, made for dancing, not for walking the line. Fragments are selected and collected – each carrying its own history – and painstakingly joined together as a material manifestation of a desire. Passion is red, but so is danger.

 “Once there was a poor motherless child who had no shoes. But the child saved cloth scraps wherever she found them and over time sewed herself a pair of red shoes. They were crude but she loved them. They made her feel rich even though her days were spent gathering food in the thorny woods until far past dark.”

Pinkola Estés, Clarissa (1992), Women who run with the Wolves: Contacting the Power of the Wild Woman, Rider, London/Sydney/Auckland/Johannesburg, p.216

The Red Shoes offer escape from a reality that feels oppressive and suffocating, a way to engage playfully with dreams of love, freedom and movement. As so often in life, the anticipation in the making promises more than later events might fulfil. Fantasy collides with reality – will the story of the Red Shoes have the happy end we have been hoping for?

 All is well while the shoes are of our own making and we dance to our own tune. Red is passion, but also danger – when passion becomes obsession, when the circles of movement narrow and close in on themselves.

A similar pair of shoes, albeit in white, forms part of Cinderella's legacy.

More fairytales

More shoe stories