What is this Foot Painting Thing huh?

Once upon a time I ran an artist online chat group. It was a place for artists to come to and talk about art stuff mainly and to socialise as being an artist can sometimes be a very isolating profession.

During this time I came across some mouth and foot artists and was amazed as to how skilled they were and how much effort goes into their work to the point I thought Id try myself just to see how hard it was. I challenged the rest of the group to try this and they like me found it really hard going. I’m sure like anything else creative it takes a bit of practice (Well actually I reckon a lot of practice for this in particular.) to get better at it. We all felt most humbled and respected the mouth and foot artists even more so!

The NZ Mouth & Foot Association will be touring New Zealand at the end of this year with an exhibition of art-works; it is expected to be at Thornton Gallery around the end of October 2010. I will definitely be checking it out.

Another issue I have with foot painting is completely different again. I have always loved shoes and to be honest I think feet are really awesome (No I don’t have any foot fetishes, I just admire feet from an art perspective!) and enjoy painting them.

For a show a couple of years ago I thought Id paint some high heels as if they were part of the foot, they created great interest and I was rather pleased with the final product, even if it was somewhat weird! A while later I was researching some ideas I had on the surrealist theme and came across a picture of some feet that were morphed into old work boots, it was a painting by Rene Magritte, who when I checked out more of his work found my sketched up ideas were very similar to some of his paintings, meaning I had to scrap the whole range as it would have looked like I was copying his ideas! Nothing is original anymore and although my ideas were only similar concepts, like a world inside a tree and day combined with night etc, there were a few too many similar ideas and I simply wouldn’t have felt right about any of them!

I still enjoy painting shoes however and they pop up from time to time depending on where I am at with my art.

Id like to say I’m off to for more shoes now, but I’m not, I think I have more than enough with about 40 pairs in my wardrobe and that’s after a clean out!