"Make Your Old Shoes New"
36"x60" Oil, Acrylic, Spray Paint, Enamel, Ink on Canvas
2010
I was at my uncle’s house for a family get together. Which one it was slips my mind. It was probably Thanksgiving or Christmas. I was looking through a few books sitting on a shelf and an old picture of my distant relatives fell out of the pages. The photo must have been from the early 1900’s. That was where this painting started.
I had become interested in some street artists like Jose Parla, Banksy, and Herakut to name just a few. After checking out some work from these folks I decided to make a stencil of each of my relatives from the photo and bust out some spray paint. The figures at the bottom left of the painting are what emerged.
From those five figures I continued to add to the painting. I saw an old commercial from who knows when…maybe the 50’s. It was for a shoe repair shop so it must have been pretty old. The slogan for the shoe shop was “Make Your Old Shoes New”. This made me think of the relatives of mine in the painting. If you think of it, we all sort of walk in our ancestors shoes, but we make it new. We tread our own path, but it is often rooted in the paths of our ancestors. I decided to add this element to my painting in the text below the black figures.
The rising sun shining on the red winged blackbird perched on the branch came from my memories of the seasonal change from winter to spring. Spring being a season of new growth and rebirth. I have no idea if it is true or not, but I remember hearing that if you start seeing red winged blackbirds flying around that spring isn’t too far away.
The woman figure to the right of the painting holds up her hand to gain the attention of the blackbird and remind it to usher in the spring.
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